Fallen
by DeathAssassinFaerie
Summary: "I-I don't know who you are," she started with a hoarse, raspy voice. "But I feel that I can trust you and this is the only place I could remember.""Shhh. Everything will be fine, Clary," the man stroked her hair soothingly. "Why don't you come inside?" The man wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her inside the apartment. "My name is Magnus Bane."
1. Chapter 1

_**Just thought I'd let you guys know that the books never happened. Before this chapter, Clary had been living in the NY Institute and knew what she was. She had a happy life with her boyfriend, best friends, and**_** parabatai****_._**_** Yes, **_**parabatai.****_ You'll see what I mean soon, but anyway... Clary was kidnapped by Jonathan and Valentine, but something went wrong and they left her in an alleyway without her memories. _**

* * *

Clary awoke with a dull throbbing in her head. What happened? she thought. Right now she was laying in an alleyway. The last thing Clary could remember was that a man with white blonde hair and black, bottomless pits for eyes stabbed her with a weird looking sword. Tears sprung in Clary's eyes as she remembered her mother's lifeless face staring at her. Instead of lying in an alleyway, Clary got up and stumbled toward the only place she knew was safe.

o.O.o

Clary hesitantly knocked on the door; tears freely running down her face. She heard someone unlocking the door multiple times from inside. When the door finally opened, a sparkly man stood in front of her. He was on the darker side with black hair that had blue glittery spikes and green, yellow cat-like eyes. The man looked startled and shocked. He also looked like he wasn't going to say anything to Clary so she spoke up.

"I-I don't know who you are," she started with a hoarse, raspy voice. "But I feel that I can trust you and this is the only place I could remember. M-my-" A sob escaped her lips. "My mom is dead. S-so-" Clary didn't get to finish her sentence because the strange man pulled her into a warm embrace. It felt oddly familiar to her.

"Shhh. Everything will be fine, Clary," the man stroked her hair soothingly. He obviously knew her. He said her name. "Why don't you come inside?" The man wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her inside the apartment. "My name is Magnus Bane."

Before Clary could sit on one of the chairs that surrounded the table, the man- Magnus took her arm. "Why don't you go take a shower? I'll make some hot cocoa."

Clary nodded and headed down the hall. Somehow she knew what room the bathroom was. It was as if she spent a lot of her time here. She locked the bathroom door and stripped her clothes. After spending a half hour crying and showering, Clary climbed out of the shower. She didn't bother looking in the mirror. She knew she looked like crap. Clary wrapped a towel around her, grabbed her dirty clothes, and headed into one of the many bedrooms that lined the walls. Again, somehow she knew where everything was. She walked right into the closet and grabbed a pair of black sweats and a t-shirt that said "Gamer Girl" in big letters. After throwing the dirty clothes in the hamper, Clary pulled on the outfit and headed back out to Magnus. Clary suddenly felt very chilly so she spotted a blanket on the couch and wrapped it around herself. Magnus was sitting at the table with two cups in front of him.

Clary sat across from him. Magnus slid a cup across to her and ,who she guessed to be Magnus's cat, jumped up on her lap and made himself comfortable. Magus smiled. "Chairman Meow likes you."

She giggled. "Chairman Meow? Isn't that a funny name for a cat?"

"Not if you're him. So, baby doll, do you want to talk about what you remember It's okay if you don't." She was starting to like Magnus already.

She shook her head. "That's just it, Magnus. I don't remember anything." Magnus raised a perfectly waxed eyebrow. "The last and only thing I remember is my mother being stabbed in the back with a weird looking sword."

Magnus's eyes widened. "Did you see who did it?"

Clary nodded. "He had a blonde white hair and black eyes. Like bottomless pit black. The whole eye." Magnus cursed. "Do you know him? Who is he? I want to kill him for what he did to my mother."

"All in good time. When you're ready and feeling better, I'm going to bring you somewhere. Then you'll find out everything, okay?"

She nodded. "Alright." Clary yawned.

"Why don't you watch some TV while I fix you up some dinner? You must be starving your skinny little ass off."

Clary chuckled. "I am hungry." She slowly got up, carrying Chairman Meow, and headed over to one of the couches. The TV was already on so she just had to change the channel.

Luckily, they were playing reruns of CSI and NCIS so Clary put that on. In the background, she heard Magnus chuckled and say something to himself. Ignoring it, Clary continued to watch.

o.O.o

Alec yawned. Another unsuccessful day of Clary-hunting. Jace is too depressed and angry at himself to do anything useful even though he's trying. Clary has been missing for two weeks. After a big battle with Jonathan and Valentine, she'd been kidnapped as well as Jocelyn. Luke has driven himself mad like Jace. Neither of them have been of any help. Isabelle acts as if she's a drone. Not that Alec blames her. Her _parabatai _is missing.

Alec took the key out of his pocket and stuck it into the door leading into his boyfriend's apartment. When he walked in, he secretly wished he'd stayed at the Institute. Sitting on his and Magnus's couch was Clary, petting a sleeping Chairman Meow. Anger spiked through Alec. "What the hell!" he exclaimed.

"Alec," Magnus warned.

"For weeks we've been looking nonstop for you and you've been fine all along!"

"Alec," Magnus warned again, voice firmer.

"How do you think-"

"Alexander!" Magnus yelled. Alec watched as Clary, obviously frightened at Alec's outburst, ran to stand behind Magnus. Magnus waited until it looked as if Alec was calmed down enough to be civil. "Alec, I can explain." Annoyed, Alec gestured for him to continue. "She can't remember."

Alec's face fell and his heart just about stopped. That's why Izzy said she felt so weird and empty. "I-I-I'm so sorry," Alec apologized. Jace is going to kill him for yelling at her like that. As will Izzy.

Clary stepped out from behind Magnus reluctantly. She nodded. "I-It's okay. Who're you?"

When Clary turned to go sit back down on the couch, Alec saw the _parabatai_ rune on the back of her neck. At least that was still there. "This is my boyfriend, Alec Lightwood," Magnus said before Alec could open his mouth.

"Lightwood," Clary said as if she were trying to say a new word. Her head whipped towards the two boys in the kitchen. "I know that name from somewhere. I-I just don't know where." A frown was plastered on her face as she tried to think.

"Don't think too hard," Magnus chided playfully as he went back to cooking whatever it was he was cooking. "I could see steam coming out of your ears." Alec had to stifle his laughter because Clary looked Magnus's way and stuck her tongue out. "I saw that," he sang-song.

Clary narrowed her eyebrows and went back to watching TV. Alec went into the kitchen to join his boyfriend. "What do we do?" he whispered, not wanting Clary to hear.

"Call Isabelle and Simon. Oh and Luke. I'm afraid I've got some rather bad news."

"What about Jace?"

"Not yet. He'll be even more devastated when he finds out she can't remember him."

Alec nodded in agreement. That was true. Magnus and him had agreed to have the meeting in the morning so Alec went to go call them.

o.O.o

The rest of the night had gone by quickly. Magnus and Alec seemed very happy to be around Clary. Although Clary didn't know why, she felt like she was finally home. When Magnus had sent her off to bed so him and Alec could "cuddle", Clary found herself sitting in the spare bedroom crying, wishing she had someone to comfort her. She could remember his warm embrace. The way he held her tight as if she would disappear when he let go. The smell of sunshine and those golden eyes. Why was it that she couldn't picture his face? She knows his eye color and the familiarity of his scent. Why not the face? Not long after that, Clary fell asleep. She was awoken hours later by an overly happy couple. A boy with brown hair and dark eyes stared down at her with a huge smile. Next to him stood a girl with really long black hair (definitely not fake) and bright blue eyes. She looked similar to Alec. They must be siblings, Clary thought. Both persons had huge scary smiles. Next thing she knew, Magnus was running in with Alec trailing in behind. What Clary didn't know was that she was screaming. The smiles were wiped off the couple's faces and replaced by confused expressions.

"Magnus!" The girl screeched.

Another person came running in then. He had dark hair and dark eyes. Luke. His mother's boyfriend. "Luke!" Clary yelled and jumped into his arms.

Luke caught the red headed girl and hugged her tight.

"Alright, that's just rude," Alec announced.

"I get it!" Magnus exclaimed earning weird looks from everyone. "Jocelyn and Luke were the last two people Clary saw before all this happened."

"The ba-" the girl started, but was cut off by Magnus.

"No. _All _of _this_."

"Oh!" The girl face palmed. When she picked her head back up, she had tears running down her face. Clary felt a pang of guilt in her chest.

Clary squirmed out of Luke's grasp and ran to the girl. She wrapped her arms around her and the girl did the same. "I may not remember you consciously, but somehow I do know you subconsciously. All of you. Except you, Luke."

Luke chuckled and ruffled Clary's hair. The girl sniffled and gave Clary another squeeze before stepping back to her obvious boyfriend. When Clary glanced at Luke again, she noticed that his eyes were red and puffy. She took a step towards him, not knowing what was wrong. Then these memories hit her full blast. Except she was watching this while voices floated through her head.

_Her mother was kneeling in front of her. "I love you, baby."_

_"No, mom! You're not dying. We will get out of this alive. The both of us."_

_Jocelyn shook her head. "No, baby. You'll get out alive, but you won't remember anything for a while. I promise you'll remember soon. Tell Magnus _unblock animo_. Your memories will come back slowly, but they will come back. I love you."_

_Clary screamed as she watched Valentine and Jonathan walk behind her mother. Jonathan grabbed a seraph blade and said its name. Valentine actually had to look away as his son plunged the sword into his ex-wife's back. Then he walked over to Clary and smacked her across the face causing her to fall into darkness. _

_o.O.o_

_"We'll be _parabatai_. __Closer than siblings." Closer than siblings._

_o.O.o_

_"I love you, Clary."_

_o.O.o_

_"Don't you dare close your eyes on me. Don't you dare die. You can't leave me!"_

_o.O.o_

_"We'll be back for you, Clarissa. When your memory returns."_

Clary opened her eyes with a gasp and looked at Magnus. "_Unblock animo,_" Clary repeated and with that, she passed out.

* * *

**_Next chapter we meet Jace! Yay! Anyway, who should little miss Clarissa remember first? Will she remember Jace or will she just pass it off as a weird coincidence? Hmm. I wonder. But anyway tell me who you guys think Clary should remember first. _**


	2. Chapter 2

Magnus sucked in a sharp breath as he caught Clary. Unblock her memories? What did Jocelyn do? Magnus laid Clary back down on the bed gently. "Everyone, out," he said.

"Magnus, fix her," Isabelle pleaded. "You have to fix her." Tears streamed down her face. It must be hard for one _parabatai _to forget the other. Magnus couldn't imagine how heartbreaking it must be.

Simon looked as if he were trying to be strong for Isabelle. Isabelle never cries so someone has to be strong. Magnus ushered them all out and locked the door. He looked down at the unconscious Clary and started murmuring the words to a spell. Blue mist surround the two. Slowly, it started to seep into Clary's head. Her body started to shake as if she were having a seizure. Someone started banging on the door from the other side, but Magnus ignored them.

"Magnus, stop it!" Alec yelled.

Magnus chanted louder until Clary stopped shaking and the blue mist finally dissolved. Clary's breathing came in short pants. Magnus bent down next to her and pulled her into an embrace. Clary's small fists grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and held him close. "Clary, darling, do you remember anything."

"That depends on what I'm supposed to remember," she mumbled into his shirt.

Magnus's arms wrapped around Clay tighter and he sat with her on the floor. "Well, who and what am I?"

Clary chuckled darkly. "You're Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn."

"And who are you?"

"Clarissa Adele Fray-Morgenstern, Shadowhunter and key, who also goes by Clary."

"Who is your best friend?"

"Um, I have a best friend?"

"Alright, so you'll remember things sooner or later. Why don't you come out and see everyone? May I just warn you that your _parabatai _is devastated."

"_Parabatai_?"

"Yeah, she misses you. They all miss you."

"I'm sorry I can't remember," Clary whispered.

"Oh, honey, it's not your fault. Your mom was trying to protect you."

"By making everyone else feel like shit!" She yelled.

"Baby doll, calm down. Everything will-"

"No! It will not be okay," she cried. "I can't remember anyone."

"Shhhh." Magnus rocked her back and forth. "Come on."

"Can you carry me?"

"Sure thing, baby doll."

Magnus stood up and carried Clary out to the kitchen. Everyone rushed up to them, accidently scaring Clary. She yelped and buried her face in Magnus's chest. "Shit. Sorry, Clare," Alec said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"S'ok, Alec."

"She remembers?" Isabelle looked at Magnus with hope filled eyes.

Before Magnus could open his mouth to answer, Clary sobbed, "I'm so sorry!"

Magnus stroked Clary's hair as she cried. "She's been very emotional."

Isabelle bit her lip and spun on her heel before stomping back to the couch and plopping down on it.

"So has she," Alec said, pointing over his shoulder at Isabelle.

Nodding, Magnus walked over to the couch and laid Clary down. Chairman Meow immediately jumped up onto her lap and fell asleep. For hours, the group talked, retelling Clary everything she forgot. It was almost time for lunch when Clary shot off the couch and towards the bedrooms. "Was it something I said?" Alec, who was speaking before, questioned.

"Magnus!" Clary yelled hoarsely.

Magnus jumped off the couch and practically ran towards Clary's voice.

o.O.o

Clary shot towards the bathroom. Suddenly, lunch wasn't sounding too good. When she arrived at the bathroom, she violently vomited into the bowl. "Magnus!" she managed to yell.

Magnus came running into the bathroom with Alec in tow. He bent down next to her and stroked her cheek. Magnus ripped his hand away from her face with a startled expression. "Magnus, what is it?" Alec asked.

"She's _burning_." Was his reply.

Burning? Was she on fire? That didn't sound too good to Clary. It felt like she was on fire. Alec leaned forward and brushed his hand against her forehead. Something sizzled and Alec ripped his hand back with the same expression as Magnus. "I don't think she's supposed to have that high of a fever."

"Not unless it's some virus from demon blood. The only thing keeping her alive right now is the extra angelic blood in her. Without that, she would have died. Burned up right on the spot. Isabelle and I will head out to get some ingredients. You and Simon stay here and _watch _her. I have a feeling this has something to do with Valentine and Jonathan. A lot to do with those two."

Alec nodded and took a seat next to Clary. Magnus gave Alec a kiss before turning on his heel and leaving. Clary continued to vomit into the toilet violently. Izzy must have left because Simon sauntered in and took a seat to Clary's left. Everything seemed so fuzzy to Clary. Her vision was blurred and her voice was slurred. Nothing made sense. Her thoughts were in a haze.

Suddenly, she was ripped from her thoughts by a loud crash in the kitchen. Alec and Simon both got up quickly, locked Clary in the bathroom, and went to go fight. Clary could hear every crash, every bang, every hiss, every grunt. It was all over too soon. Simon and Alec fought well, but it sounded to Clary that there was five demons.

Minutes ticked by, anticipation building up in Clary. A knock on the door caused her to jump. Cautiously, Clary opened the door. A demon with orange scales and uber sharp teeth grinned infamously. Clary screamed as loud as she could, hoping to attract neighbors. No one came. Think, Clary, think. Anything could be used as a weapon.

Clary back up and smashed the mirror with her fist. She broke off a piece and gripped it tightly. Blood dripped from the cut the sharp glass created. Clary slashed at the demon, cutting a jagged line in its skin. It hissed at her, but the wound healed fast. Clary cursed under her breath and slid under its legs.

Alec and Simon were laying on the floors unconscious, scratches on their chests with blood starting to pool around them. Clary groaned, suddenly not feeling well at all. Bile clawed away at her throat as she ran towards the seraph blade on the ground by Alec. She ran forward and grabbed it. The demon advanced, hissing at the seraph blade.

Just as Clary slashed down, Chairman Meow attacked from behind. The demon folded in on itself and disappeared. Clary turned around and sighed at the two boys on the floor. Grabbing both of their right arms, Clary successfully dragged them to their rooms. Her burning skin left blisters on their arms, but she couldn't worry about that right now. Right now, she had to throw up. Clary ran back into the bathroom and threw up for like the tenth time.

o.O.o

Magnus and Isabelle came home to an apartment that was totally ransacked. His heart sped up as he walked deeper into the apartment. Chairman Meow was sitting on the table cleaning the blood off of him. There were puddles of blood in different spots on the floor and it reeked of demons. "Clary!" he yelled. "Clary!"

Isabelle ran towards the rooms, checking every one on the right while Magnus check all the ones on the left. Magnus went through every room until he finally reached the bathroom. He had to break down the door. Clary was laying on the tiled floor in a black bra and underwear. She had blood matted in her hair and runes drawn all over her skin.

"Demons," she choked out before leaning over the toilet to throw up again. "M-magnus, I don't think I'm supposed to puke that."

Curiously, Magnus leaned over to see what she was talking about. Clary was most definitely not supposed to be throwing up blood. "Uh, Isabelle!" Magnus called.

Isabelle came jogging into the bathroom. "I found Si and Alec. They were laying unconscious in their rooms. I used an iratze on Alec and gave Si some blood. What's going on?"

"Clary's puking blood."

Isabelle sucked in a sharp breath. "I don't think that's good."

Alec came limping in next. "I am so sorry, Magnus. There were so many of them."

"It's alright, Alec. Just try and get some rest," Magnus instructed.

Alec nodded and headed back towards his room.

o.O.o

Jace walked silently down each block that led to Magnus's apartment. Everyone was always spending time there without him. Jace was starting to get suspicious. That is exactly why he told Maryse that he had to go get something from the store. She was reluctant to let him leave, but nonetheless let him go. As he got closer, the lingering smell of demons got stronger. Jace quickened his pace. By the time he arrived at Magnus's, he noticed the door was ajar and the smell of demons was so strong that he almost vomited. Jace practically ran up the stairs. Everything was ransacked. Alec was limping, there was blood puddles on the floor, Simon was drinking blood, and Izzy was running back and forth between the kitchen and one of the bathrooms.

"What's going on here?" Jace demanded. "What the hell happened?"

Izzy gasped and Alec started coming towards him. Jace could hear low voices coming from the bathroom. Magnus was speaking calmly to someone. This time Magnus rushed into the kitchen as Izzy ran into the bathroom. A familiar voice yelled. "Magnus! I don't th-" she was interrupted by vomiting noises.

Magnus finally saw Jace. "Alec! Take care of Jace." Magnus ran back to the bathroom. "Baby doll, calm down. It's just making it worse."

There was only one person in the world who Magnus called Baby doll. Or any nickname for that matter. Jace ran towards the bathroom except Alec got in his way. He knew he was going to regret this later, but he pushed his _parabatai_ to the side and ran into the bathroom.

"Jace, get out!" Magnus yelled.

"Don't make me hurt you," Izzy threatened.

"Clary!" Jace called.

Clary looked towards him with watery eyes. She raised an eyebrow. "W-" Magnus clapped a hand over her mouth as Jace drank in her appearance.

She was wearing a black bra and black underwear. The only difference was that she was covered with blood. Clary looked up at Jace with questioning eyes. Jace's heart broke. "What is going on?" His voice was thick and raw with emotion.

Alec grabbed Jace and took him out into the hall way. "She can't remember." That was all it took for Jace to break. He ran a hand through his hair as tears threatened to spill.

"No," he said shakily. "T-this can't be happening."

"It's not," said a soft voice behind him. Jace turned to find Clary staring up at him with loving eyes. "It took me a moment, but the memories came rushing back. I love you, Jace." Clary jumped into his arms.

"I love you too, Clary." Jace kissed her forehead.

Suddenly, Magnus ripped Clary from Jace's arms and gently sat her in the toilet. "Honey, I need you to take deep breathes."

"What's going on?" Jace demanded.

"That's not fair," Izzy muttered, pushing passed Jace.

Alec chuckled. "Come on, buddy. I'll explain."

* * *

_**I would just like to make it clear that once Clary gets her memory back, fully, I'll be writing in first person. Which is a couple chapters from now, but anyway... A lot of the reviews said either Magnus and not Jace or just Jace. There were about the same amount for each so I gave you both Magnus and Jace.. I thought I'd add some fluff to the story. Ohhh and tell me if there is anyone specific you'd like to see in the story. I can bring back the dead too. That's what being an author entitles you too xD Oh and sorry if anything is wrong. Being deprived of sleep makes you mess things up :)**_


	3. Chapter 3

Just as Alec had finished telling Jace everything he knows about what was going on with Clary, the obvious elephant in the room decided to make an appearance. Clary took a seat on the floor with her back against the wall. Magnus had had her change into a band-T and short shorts because her fever had gone down. She came to the conclusion that Chairman Meow loves her because, once again, he trotted over and made himself comfortable on her lap. Confusion and sadness washed over her as she watched Izzy stand up angrily and stomp away. Clary suddenly found an interest in the cat laying in her lap. A hand on her shoulder made her jump. Crouching in front of her was Jace, looking as handsome as ever.

"It's not your fault you can't remember her," he said softly.

Clary's eyes watered. "Why is this happening to me?" Her voice broke and a sob escaped.

"Oh, baby." Jace pulled her into a tight embrace. She cried into the crook of his neck while he rubbed her back and whispered sweet nothings in her ear.

"I want it to stop," she sobbed. "It hurts so much. The burning and sharp pain above my heart." Jace pulled away and gave her a questioning glance. "I don't know! It just hurts so much."

"Magnus," Jace called.

Clary clutched her heart in agony. Pain spread throughout her chest. As she screamed in pain, Chairman Meow ran off, and Jace swung Clary up in his arms. Magnus started to instruct Jace. "Bring her into her bedroom and lay her carefully on the bed. Then I need you to rip her shirt off. Okay? Be gentle about it. We don't need her in anymore pain."

Jace walked quickly into Clary's room and carefully set her on the bed. She was writhing in pain and arching her back. Jace pulled a dagger from his pocket and cut the collar of her shirt. Then he put it away and ripped the shirt. As he carefully pushed Clary's arms out of the sleeves, Magnus came in, locking the door behind him. Then he instructed Jace to hold her arms down.

"Magnus," Clary implored. "It hurts. Make it stop."

"Where, Clary? You need to tell me where."

"My heart," she gasped out.

Magnus turned to Jace. "You need to get out now. I don't think you want to see this."

"No," Clary choked out. "Let him stay."

A faint blush stood out on Jace's cheeks making Magnus chuckle before getting completely serious again. "If he must."

Whatever Magnus was doing went by agonizingly slow to Clary. She had thought he'd murmured something along the lines of "sensing what was going on with her body", but Clary couldn't be sure. All she felt was the pain engulfing her. It felt like someone was taking her body and throwing it into a fire repeatedly as they cut designs into her skin with a very sharp knife. All she wanted to do was scream, but she knew she couldn't. She had to suck it up and help everyone else try to find Valentine. Clary took slow, ragged breaths to calm herself from the pain. After what seemed like hours, Magnus was finally finished. Clary gasped and seized up. It was life her whole body was cramping up and it was the most uncomfortable thing she's ever felt.

"Magnus, what is this?" Jace rubbed his finger over a black web that stood diligently over Clary's heart. Clary hissed as his finger connected with the web. "Sorry," he apologized sheepishly.

"I have no idea." Magnus turned his focus back on Clary. "Baby doll, I know this hurts, but it should be over in a minute. Then you'll just have a black web across your heart until I can figure out what it is and how to get rid of it." He was lying. Clary could tell. Magnus knew something and wasn't sharing.

If Clary could nod to let him know that she understands, she would. Obviously, though, she cannot.

"Do you want to go see Max later? He'll cheer you up. You two can read comics for hours," said Jace.

Finally, Clary could move again. She let out a sigh as her muscles let go. "Magnus?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you," said Clary sincerely.

Magnus beamed, but there was something in his eyes. From what Clary could tell, it wasn't good. "It is my pleasure to help a close friend in need."

Clary turned to Jace for a second. "Can you go get me some hot cocoa?"

Jace nodded and kissed Clary's forehead. "I'll be right back."

As soon as Jace was out the door, Clary turned to Magnus. He looked nervous and sympathetic. "How bad is it?" Several tears leaked out of Magnus's eyes. "That bad?" Clary could feel her own tears welling up in her eyes. "How long do I have?"

Magnus kneeled down so he could be eye level with Clary. "About a week. But you're not dying."

"What do you mean?"

"They're coming for you and when Jonathan's blood is right at the verge of killing you, they're going to turn you."

"Turn me?"

"Into something beyond powerful."

"That's bad?"

He nodded somberly. "Baby doll, you're already considered a weapon. When they turn you, y-you're going to be reborn. A-a demon is going to share your body." His face was solemn. "It will be like you're watching a movie. It's just going to be inside your own body."

"Is there a way to break free of it?" Clary's voice shook. In the back of her mind, she wondered what was taking Jace so long even though she was glad it was.

Magnus grimaced. "Yes, but I don't know if you'd come back."

Clary sighed. "What is it, Magnus?"

"You give your soul up to Raziel."

She sucked in a sharp breath. "How?"

"You'll have to go collect the Mortal Instruments and raise Raziel from Lake Lyn. But that is too dangerous."

"So you're saying I stay like that forever? That I'll end up killing everyone I love? Magnus, you have to promise me that you'll collect the Mortal Instruments and force me to come with you to Lake Lyn." He looked away from Clary's pleading eyes. "Please, Magnus," she implored. "I don't want to live like that. I'd rather take my chance with Raziel then be imprisoned inside my own body."

He sighed and gave in reluctantly. "I love you, Baby doll. I will make sure you come out of this alive."

A sad smiled grew on Clary's face. "Thank you." Magnus got up. "And Magnus? If I try to kill any one of you, kill me first okay?"

Magnus looked sad. "Okay," he whispered.

At that moment Jace decided to make an appearance. He looked at the two blotchy red, puffy eyed people in front of him. "What's going on?" He asked quizzically.

"Nothing's wrong, Jace. Everything is just perfect." She could tell that he didn't believe her, but he didn't push the topic.

o.O.o

"Izzy!" Clary called. "Do you have any nice looking tank top that I can borrow? I'm going to see your little brother."

A squeal of happiness rang throughout the apartment earning groans of displeasure from the boys. Izzy ran in with a gigantic grin on her face. "Who am I?" She asked.

"Okay, so either you've gone insane, or you can't even remember who you are, yourself." Izzy rolled her eyes. "You are Isabelle Lightwood. My _parabatai_ and best friend." She turned and lifted her hair to show Izzy her _parabatai _rune.

"Hey!" Simon whined. "I'm your best friend!"

Clary chuckled. "Anyway, Iz, can I borrow something? I'm gonna go see Max with Jace."

"You remember me, dumbass," Izzy slapped her upside her head. Then she screamed and threw her arms around her best friend. "I freaking love you!"

"I love you, too." Clary screamed alongside Izzy causing Jace to run out of the bathroom and to his girlfriend's side. He only had a towel wrapped around his waist as his hair dripped water.

"Are you okay? How's your heart?"

"Oh stop being such a worry wart." Izzy smacked his chest. "I was just thrilled that Clary could remember everything... I think. Anyway, she joined me in screaming like girls because we were happy."

Jace sighed in relief before giving Clary a kiss and walking back into the bathroom.

"Clary! We're here! Where are you?" A familiar yet unfamiliar voice yelled as the front door slammed shut.

Clary raised an eyebrow and followed Izzy into the living room. There stood Luke and two other people. A girl around Clary's age stood there with her eyes narrowed in a scrutinizing look. She had brown hair which was up in a neat pony tail, warm brown eyes, and light cocoa colored skin. The guy next to her looked a little older. He had olive colored skin, shaggy brown hair, and hazel eyes. For a minute, Clary stood there confused, but then Izzy saved her.

"She's a little confused right now."

"She can't remember," the girl pointed out.

The guy turned to her. They seemed to be dating. "What do you mean?"

"Miss Clarissa Fray cannot remember who we are. I could smell the demon blood in her as soon as I stepped in here. The apartment has also been ambushed by demons."

Ignoring everyone else, Clary turned to Luke with an apologetic look. "I'm so sorry! I didn't even realize that you weren't in the apartment."

Luke chuckled. "That's fine. Have I missed anything important? Demon blood?

Clary's face fell. He didn't know that Jocelyn was dead yet, did he? Besides that, no one but Magnus knew what the future held. Clary regained her composure, but not before Luke saw. "Uh, yeah. Can you come with me into Magnus's room for a few minutes?" She didn't feel right around these people.

The girl's eyes narrowed. "Whatever you say in front of Luke can be said in front of us."

"Maia," Luke chastised.

"_Luke_," the girl- Maia, mocked.

"Maia, stop," the guy said.

"No, Jordan!" Maia threw her arms up into the air in frustration. For a second, she shifted weirdly and that scared Clary. Everything was still fuzzy for her and she wasn't used to being in the same room as a werewolf. Other than Luke, of course.

"Jace," Clary cried loudly.

Not one, but several pairs of feet came barreling down the hallway. Strong, familiar arms wrapped around Clary and she was pulled backwards. Magnus gave her to Jace, who was standing next to Alec and Simon. "Maia, you need to calm your ass down," Izzy snarled.

The fear struck something in Clary and she started hacking up a lung. "Get her into the bathroom," Magnus instructed. "The fear that Clary was feeling must have churned her stomach a lot. We don't need blood all over."

Jace nodded. Alec and Jace wrapped an arm around Clary and were practically dragging her into the bathroom. Her head was spinning and she felt extremely nauseous. She wasn't going to throw up. She couldn't throw up. Not now. That symptom was supposed to stop. The boys placed Clary inside the bathtub and helped her take off her band-T. She was now sitting in only a tank top and shorts.

"Take deep breaths, Clare. Just breathe," Alec said in an eerie calm voice.

Clary did as instructed. She calmed down quicker than she thought she would. "I'm fine," she breathed.

"Just stay in here for a few more minutes," Jace practically pleaded.

"Then can we _please _go see Max? I miss him. He's like a little brother to me."

Both boys nodded. "Magnus is probably explaining everything to Luke, so I'm going to go and help him." Alec kissed Clary's forehead before patting Jace on the back and leaving.

* * *

**We will meet Max in the next chapter._ So, I think this chapter came out pretty nicely. I have big plans for this. Oh and in like two weeks, I won't be updating for about a week because I'll be in Tennessee. Cannot wait. Uber excited. I'm gonna go see the Parthenon in Nashville. One day I'll actually go to Greece and see the real one... One day... Anyway, here's the chappie. Talk to you guys soon :) PM me if you have suggestions or ideas. Please Review. _**


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn't long before Luke ran into the bathroom in tears with Magnus and Alec hot on his heels. Clary looked at him quizzically. Jace stood up and left with Magnus and Alec to give them some space. Luke cupped Clary's face in his hands. "You didn't tell me about your mother."

Tears sprung in Clary's eyes. "It had slipped my mind. I know that is unexceptable because I'm her daughter, but I-I.. It's just so much!" Clary cried. Luke hugged her tightly to his chest. They cried over everything. Luke, for his stepdaughter and wife. Clary, for everything going on in her life and her mother.

**Clary POV**

After the break down at Magnus's, I snuck out of his apartment after only consulting with Izzy about my plans. Yes, I know, stupid move, but I knew that if I told Jace that he'd want to come with me. I wanted to be alone with Max on our mini date. Izzy was reluctant at first to let me go, but after convincing her that I would be safe at Taki's, she let me go. It didn't take me long to arrive at the Institute. I had Izzy call Maryse ahead of time so Max would be ready to just walk to Taki's. Max, as I suspected, was sitting on the steps waiting for me. His little eight year old self jumped up and ran into my open arms. "You're really here! I missed you!" He wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me.

"I am really here and I missed you too," I laughed and hugged him back.

He pulled back and looked by my neck. "What is that?"

"Oh, uh, that's just a new tattoo I'm trying out. Anyway, why don't we head to Taki's? I bet you're hungry because I know I am."

Max nodded and ran in front of me. I wasn't worried because I have a seraph blade strapped to my leg and some daggers strapped to my belt. Besides, I think Izzy let Luke and Simon know what I was doing because I can sense them running in the shadows. Just as long as they leave me alone I'm fine. Max and I arrived at Taki's not long after leaving the Institute. Both of us ordered our usual, blueberry waffles with hot chocolate. Kaelie must have been called and informed because she kept sneaking glances our way. What did Izzy do? Alert the whole damn town?

"So Max, how have you been?" I asked, breaking the eerie silence.

He looked sad and melancholy. "Missing my buddy," he answered.

I frowned and reached my hand across the table to grab his hand. "I'm sorry, bud. If I could have stayed I would have."

Max nodded solemnly. "Where did you go?"

"Well, I, uh, was taken some place far away and I had to figure out how to get back to all of you."

"As long as you're safe now," the little man beamed.

Guilt ate away at me. In less than a week I was going to be leaving him. I had to. It's not like I had much of a choice anyway. Valentine and Jonathan were going to take me whether I wanted to go or not. Everyone was going to be so pissed at me. This is going to suck royally.

"Clary?" Max brought me out of my mind babble about the upcoming events.

"Hm?"

"Who is that? He keeps looking at you like you're a meal."

I followed Max's gaze. There sat Jonathan in all his glory. Pale white hair and black bottomless pits for eyes. He was wearing a white button down with dark blue jeans. I squeezed Max's hand. "See the waitress? Her name is Kaelie and she can take good care of you. Why don't you go wait with her while I sort this out?"

Max reluctantly obliged and made his way over to Kaelie who was on the phone, staring straight and Jonathan. Then her eyes flickered to me and she shook her head no. She was trying to tell me not to advance. I didn't listen.

**Max POV **

Clary must have known that guy because her brave facade didn't falter once. I had walked right over to the waitress, Kaelie, who looked about ready to kill Clary. From what I could tell and understand, this didn't seem too good. Kaelie took me outside. All of a sudden, Izzy and Alec were standing right in front of me. They both looked really mad. I wonder what is going on inside with Clary and that guy. Simon and Luke joined their flanks, as did Magnus. Where was Jace? Weren't him and Clary dating?

**Clary POV **

I got up as Max walked over to Kaelie. Jonathan was grinning foolishly and I just wanted to smack that grin off his face. "What are you doing here, Jonathan?" I growled.

"Little sister, aren't you happy to see me?" He chuckled.

I pushed him backwards. "Get the hell out of here."

Jonathan grabbed my hands and pulled me against his chest. He bent down so he could whisper in my ear. "Don't ever do that again." Then he _smelled _my hair. He freaking smelt it. "Mmmm. You smell so good."

I jerked away from him in disgust, but I couldn't get my hands back. "Let go of me, you bastard. I'm not supposed to be going with you for a week."

"Ahh. So little sis did do her homework. I guess I'll be seeing you in a week." He pressed his lips to mine and nudged my mouth open. I tried to push him away, but his arms tightened around me. About a minute later, he released me and let go with a smirk.

After he was out of sight, I wiped my mouth in disgust. How dare that little-. Someone put their hand on my shoulder and I squeaked. I turned around to find Izzy, Alec, Magnus, Simon, Luke, and Max standing there. "Never again, Baby doll," Magnus said.

"Damn right, never again," Luke said in unison with Simon and Alec.

"Oops?" I shrugged. "He is so disgusting. We are freaking siblings."

"Eww." Max scrunched up his face.

I chuckled. "Let's get you home."

o.O.o

"How did you get out of the house without Jace?" I asked as we turned the corner, heading back to Magnus's apartment.

Magnus chuckled while Simon smirked along with Izzy and Alec. Luke shook his head in amusement. "Ducks," Alec answered. "We told him there was an emergency with ducks."

I giggled. "Of course you did." They laughed. Magnus opened the door to his apartment to find Jace fighting with Chairman Meow. He had scratches on his face and arms. "Uh, Jace? What's going on?"

Jace narrowed his eyes at me. "They," he pointed to the others. "Said you went to bed. So when they left I went in and tried to cuddle with you. Yeah, well instead of you, I cuddled with a temperamental cat. Him and Church would be best friends."

Everyone burst out laughing. "You... cuddled... with... Chairman Meow?" I said between fits of laughter.

Jace grunted before turning around and stomping away like a five year old. "Clare bear, I think you should go talk with the baby," Alec said, chuckling.

With one last laugh, I spun on my heel and headed in the direction that Jace went.

There he sat, sulking on my bed with his arms crossed and Chairman Meow scratches all over him. I sauntered over and straddled him. "Is someone having a bad day?" I teased.

"Better now that you're here." He grinned cheekily.

"How are the scratches?" I asked.

He shrugged. "They burn, but I'll just use an iratze."

I leaned forward and lightly kissed the scratches one by one. Let imagination be the guide to what went on next.

* * *

Jace and I laid between the sheets. Our bare bodies pressed up against each other. Both of us were slick with sweat. "Do you think Magnus would kill us?" I asked, giggling breathlessly.

"Maybe me, but not you," Jace answered with a chuckle. "It's the truth."

"Because I'm just so lovable." I turned to look at Jace with a smug grin.

Jace shook his head. "Come on, let's get up."

"Nooooo," I whined.

He raised an eyebrow at me before throwing me over his shoulder. "Time for a shower."

o.O.o

Magnus wasn't too happy with us but he dealt with it. Jace and I laughed a lot at the look on his face. Magnus then gave us a wink and told us to go disinfect the sheets and shower. Then I retorted with telling him the same thing.

"Touche," he said and left.

* * *

_**A/N: Sort of crappy chappie, but eh. SO SO SORRY i haven't been able to update. I've been utterly busy, but now I'm going to try something. I'm going on vacation soon so I thought I'd write a couple chapters and update them all at once. How's that sound? And don't worry, Jace will find out soon enough... Sorta. **_

_**Check out my story on Fictionpress . net. I need to update that too, but all in good time. :)**_

_**XOXO**_

_**DeathAssassinFaerie **_


	5. Chapter 5

The rest of the week went by in a daze. I spent as much time with Jace as I did with Magnus. Which is a lot. Magnus and I have finally located all the Mortal Instruments. Getting to them is the problem. Especially if there is anyone else going after them. Surprisingly, a lot of people didn't know that Lake Lyn itself was the mirror.

I quickly changed into a black blouse and skinny's. Magnus met me in the living room. My eyes widened in shock when I noticed Izzy sitting at the table with a sad smile directed towards me. "You didn't think I'd let my parabatai go without saying good bye, did you?"

A smile danced on my lips and I ran to her and gave her a hug. "Please. _Please_ Do not trick Jace into thinking that there are ducks somewhere. If you do, at least tape it so when I'm back to normal, I can watch."

Izzy giggled. "I was going to inform him that there were ducks in his dresser. Maybe if I tell him that your room is infested with ducks, he'll leave it alone until you "come out"."

"You can't tell him, Iz. No one can know." She nodded. "I guess you'll be helping in the search for the Mortal Instruments?"

"You bet your ass I am. I am so not letting you get away with having a demon inside you for all eternity."

I looked her sternly in the eye. "If, and I mean _if_, I try to kill anyone, kill me. End my life before I end theirs."

Tears glistened in her eyes. Izzy shook her head. "No." Tears sprung in my eyes as well as I nodded. "No!"

I wrapped my arms around her tightly. "I love you, Iz."

"I love you too, Clare. We'll save you. I promise." We stayed wrapped in each other's embrace for another moment before I pulled back and walked to Magnus.

"Thank you for all that you've done for me. Would you tell Jace that I love him and want him to move on?"

Magnus' eyes hardened. "_You are coming back_," he growled. "I. Will. Not. Let. You. Die."

"You can't be sure of that. Both of you promised that if I try to kill someone that you'd kill me. Now, it is time for me to go. I'll be getting uber sick in t minus ten minutes. So this is goodbye." I hugged both of them before heading out the door.

This was it. This was going to be my last few minutes in my own body before I was possessed.

**Izzy POV**

I chuckled darkly after making sure Clary was gone. Magnus looked concerned as he raised an eyebrow at me. "I didn't promise."

"You sneaky little bitch," Magnus grinned.

"So, listen to me, Warlock. If Clary does try to kill someone, we lock her up, okay?" He nodded.

"I can't be there because I promised to kill her."

I nodded. "I understand." After pondering on a thought for a minute, I turned back to Magnus. "We have to tell someone else." He raised an eyebrow. "If we do need to lock her up, you can't help me. I don't think that she'll be that easy to get so I'm going to need another person."

"Why do you tell Alec and Simon? "

"And Luke!" I chirped.

"Yes, so he can inform his pack and be on the look out. Then he could help lock Clary away and we can have guards."

"And you look for a cure."

"The Mortal Instruments," he reminded me with a stern look.

Rolling my eyes, I nodded and stood up, suppressing a yawn. This was going to be hard. For one, Clary could end up being anywhere. Two, Jace could find out and screw everything up. Three, Jace could end up finding out and being a big help. Either one, but the future is unclear. Sure he'll want to help, but he'll let his feelings get in the way and he'll most likely be tricked. Four, Clary could end up killing us all. I just hope she does it in a quick, fashionable manner.

o.O.o

Morning couldn't have come quick enough. Although, my mind is reeling. Is Clary okay? Did Sebastian and Valentine turn her? How will Jace react? What are we going to say to him? I force myself out of bed. With little momentum, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Tears welled in my eyes, but I forced them back. This wasn't a time to be crying.

I staggered over to my dresser and ran a brush carefully through my hair. Then I went to the closet and picked out a ruffled purple top and dark dress pants. Don't have a motive behind these clothes, but for whatever reason, my subconscious decided to pick these out. Hopefully, I'm not planning on Clary's funeral. That would make me feel like shit. After slipping the clothes on, I made my way out into the living room. I felt like shit. My heart hurt, my _parabatai_ rune burned, my throat was raw, and my body ached. My body aching, was weird, but I didn't care right now.

"Magnus," I called, trying to keep my voice calm and unwavering, but failing. Magnus came strolling out of his room, a frown prominent on his face. "It's done."

"Are you sure?" He whispered.

I nodded, biting my lip. Then I pointed to my _parabatai _rune. "It burns."

"Duly noted. That probably means that it is done. You're right. So keep on the look out. We'll go see Luke today and Simon should be here soon. I already told Alec. He's been in the bathroom for a while."

"Do you think he'll keep it from Jace?"

"Keep what from me?" Jace asked, popping up out of nowhere.

"Nothing," I said nonchalantly. It wasn't too quick of an answer to indicate that I was hiding anything.

Just then, Alec came sauntering out of Magnus' bedroom. His face was blotchy and his eyes were red and puffy. "Alec?" Jace watched him carefully.

Before Alec could open his mouth to tell Jace I tackled him. "Don't you dare," I growled in his ear before getting up an walking to Magnus. I angrily yanked open the door. "I'm going to Luke. Tell Simon to meet me at Taki's with Maia and Jordan."

With a sad look, Magnus nodded.

**Magnus POV**

After Isabelle left, Jace raised an eyebrow at Alec, who was still laying on the ground. Alec shook his head and Jace helped him up.

"Where's Clary?" Jace asked. Then he started grinning. "I have a very important question for her." He patted his pocket. I stared in disbelief.

* * *

_**A/N: Sorry for the short chapter. The next chapter will be up tomorrow. I decided not to update them all at one time. Anyway, We find out Clary's experience tomorrow and Jace's reaction along with Simon's and Luke's. Spoiler: Maia and Jordan aren't in New York.**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**Blondie-xox: I would never want a demon possessed fiancé. Lol. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't. I don't think Jace will either. Although I'm sure he'd prefer Clary alive than dead and take her in absolutely any condition she's in.**_

* * *

**Magnus POV**

Alec and I turned to look at each other. He looked like he just wanted to cry. But the tension in the room was slowly building. My heart clenched, for both Clary and Jace. When Jace finds out about Clary, it'll defuse like a bomb; blow up in all of our faces. Isabelle is pissed. Very pissed. Not to mention that she could probably decapitate any of us at any minute. Aren't I glad that she left.

"Maybe you should wait until Clary wakes up," I suggested.

Jace seemed to ponder on the thought. Then he nodded in agreement. "All right. I'll wait until she wakes up."

Alec decided to be useful. He chose his tactic carefully. "Why don't you go out and book a reservation at a restaurant? Make everything romantic for her," his voice caught at the end, but Jace didn't seem to notice. Alec cleared his throat. "We'll send her your way around seven."

Jace saw absolutely nothing wrong with that plan and he nodded. He smiled at his parabatai. "Don't tell her what I'm planning."

"We won't," I assured him. With that, Jace headed out. I sighed and turned to Alec. "Are you okay?"

Alec bit his lip and shook his head. I opened my arms and he stepped right into them. I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tightly. "She's not going to be okay, is she?"

"We'll find the Mortal Instruments, raise Raziel, and Clary will be fine."

"Jace is going to be devastated when he finds out."

"Yeah, well, we'll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, Simon should be heading up the steps. We'll tell him to go to Isabelle and then we'll all get together and devise a plan."  
Alec nodded. I just hope everything turns out okay. Clary and Jace get their happy ending and everything goes back to the way it was.

**Clary POV**

Oh how violently sick I got. Blood was everywhere. _My _blood no doubt. There was an annoying ringing in my ears and I could feel my heart thudding painfully, like it wanted to be free and out of my chest. I crawled my way into an alley and waited. Drowning in my own blood isn't something I want to experience again. I sat with my back against the hard, cold brick wall of the building behind me. My blood pulsed in my ears and slowly, darkness crept at the corners of my vision. It felt as if someone was strangling me. I was gasping for breath like a fish out of water. My lungs were filling with blood and my head was going crazy. Darkness crept into my vision faster. A dizzy spell took me over and I swayed, although I was sitting. This was it. The end of me. My vision became blurred, but I could still make out two male silhouettes. Then I saw their blurred bodies.

"Hey, sis. How's it feel drowning in your own blood? It's not fun, is it? That's okay because it'll all be over. Just wait a few more minutes." Sebastian? Why is he here? Where is Valentine?

"Clean her up and get her in the dress," I heard Valentine faintly instruct Sebastian.

Then I realized what he meant. Sebastian was going to undress me. I mustered up all my will power to try and push Sebastian away, but he just chuckled at my feeble attempts. Then, finally, my heart slowed and had its last beat as death welcomed me with open arms.

Death is a funny thing. You can't really describe it. It starts off as all darkness, but then blinding white light envelopes you. Then starts your trial. You're given two choices–

"_Clarissa Adele Morgenstern_," a voice that was definitely not human hissed. "_Go to the right and begin your journey. If you make it to the end, you can get your body back. But, that won't be happening_."

My mind started to go fuzzy. I was forgetting everything. This time, I feared I wouldn't get my memories back.

"_Did I mention that you'll start off with no recollection of who you are? A reward for completing a task is ten memories. Fail to complete a task and you only get five back. At the end, if you do succeed, you'll need to go and collect the rest of your memories. Your memories hold the key to regaining your body. Too bad that you won't be able to do any of this. We have all of eternity, deary. Good luck and make sure to get rid of yourself for good_."

My breath caught. I could get my body back without the Mortal Instruments. It won't be easy obviously, but I'll get it done. I'll get back to my friends and everything will go back to the way it was. Hopefully.

"_By the by, Clarissa. Did I mention your brother was hot?" _

"Who the hell are you?!" I yelled in frustration.

"_Why, it is I, Lamashtu, daughter of Anu and killer of unborn babies." _

I looked around in disgust. "You kill unborn babies?"

A chuckle echoed throughout the darkness. "_Of course I do. You're lucky you weren't pregnant when I took over your body." _Silence. _"I must go. Your hotness of a brother is calling you. I mean me." _Ew lady. Just Ew.

* * *

_**A/N: Okay, so I was wrong. No Jace reaction and short chappie. I was watching Fairy Tail while doing this... Nalu forever 3 Larnashtu is a creeper who is after Sebastian. Ew. That's gonna be a sight. Anyway, You'll find out what Clary meant by drowning in her blood again in the next chapter. Which will probably be up tomorrow if I have time to post it. Farewell! Spoiler: Clary goes to Pandemonium :) Can you guess what happens there? **_


	7. Chapter 7

**Jace POV **

I must have waited until closing. Still, there was no Clary. I was starting to worry. The restaurant finally kicked me out. They told me that the girl I was waiting for wasn't worth it. Clary _is _worth it. I angrily went back to Magnus' apartment.

"Magnus!" I yelled. Every head in the room whipped towards me. Simon, Izzy, Alec, Luke, Magnus, Robert, Maryse, and a beat up Maia all looked at me with sad eyes. "What is going on?"

"Jace," Maia choked up. I looked her over. Her hair was tousled, her clothes were ripped, bruises that should have been gone covered her skin.

"You might as well tell him. I mean, you freaking sent him to a restaurant and made him think that his girlfriend was going to show up," Simon exclaimed.

Tears blurred my vision, but I held them back. "Where's Clary?" My voice wavered. I tried to keep it firm, but failed.

Magnus pointed to the sofa. "Take a seat, Jace."

"No! I will not take a seat. Tell me where my girlfriend is!" I screamed.

He took a deep breath and turned to Izzy. She rolled her eyes and huffed. "Clary was... how do I put this? Taken by Sebastian and Valentine."

"Well we have to get her back!"

She shook her head. "She's been possessed. We need to take it easy and get what we have to."

"The hell we do." I went into the room that Clary was staying in and slammed the door behind me.

All of her stuff was gone. The clothes in the closet that had been brought over by Luke, her sheets, all of her drawings. All of it. It was all gone. It was like Clary was never here in the first place. A sob crawled up my throat, but I forced it back. Tears slowly made their way down my face. My fists clenched. Next thing I knew, my fist was going through the wall. Blood trickled down my arm and my knees buckled causing me to collapse onto the floor. Sobs racked my body and tears flowed from my eyes. I curled up on the floor and let everything out.

**Izzy POV** * _a while __after she left Magnus'* _

"What do you mean Jordan was taken, Maia?" Luke asked for the millionth time.

She sobbed. "I don't know! One minute, we're fighting waves of demons and the next, he was gone."

I took a deep breath before asking another question. "Where are you now?"

"I tried to follow the scent of the demons. The scent only took me to Pennsylvania."

"You're in Pennsylvania?" Simon exclaimed.

"Well, no. I started the journey back home. One of the demons got me good so I'm not healing properly."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "What kind of demon?"

Maia sighed. "I don't know, Luke."

"Magnus will bring you through a portal. Call him and have him do that," I instructed.

"All right." I hung up the phone and put it back in my pocket.

Luke and Simon sat in front of me. Simon with his cup of hot chocolate and blood, Luke with a cup of coffee. We were waiting for my parents to show up so we can finish talking about Clary. I've already explained to these two what had happened with her. To relieve stress, Simon and I were going to go to Pandemonium. Hopefully, a demon there will know the whereabouts of Clary. We seriously should have put a tracking device on her.

"What is it that you need, Isabelle. We were going to take Max to the comic book store."

I patted the seat next to me and moved over. "We need to talk."

My mother and father shared a look of concern before sitting down. "Iz, you're not pregnant are you? Although, I don't see why Lucian would be here if you were. What is going on?"

With the help of Simon and Luke, I went into the story of what happened to Clary.

**Third Person **

Screams could be heard for miles. Jordan, no longer in wolf form, cringed every time a scream was added to the mix. To his distaste, demons flanked his sides. In front of him stood his good friend, Clarissa Adele Fray. She looked nothing like herself. Her hair was longer and straightened, her body was curvier, and her eyes. They were just like her brother's. Black bottomless pits. Clary looked at Jordan with a look of disdain.

"Must we have him here? This mangy mutt is useless." Her lip curled over her teeth in a snarl.

The one and only Jonathan Morgenstern stepped out of the shadows. "Easy, Lamashtu. He will be very useful once we get him in our ranks."

"How could you be so sure, Master?" Clary placed her hand on Sebastian's bicep in a very un-sisterly way.

Sebastian rolled his eyes. "Bring forth the cup."

Two demons came forward holding a large circular plate in between them. On that plate sit a peculiar cup. It shone bright gold with spiral designs.

Jordan scoffed. "Why are you two acting all chummy and talking obsolete? And what the hell is a cup supposed to do."

Clary raised an eyebrow at Jordan. "This is not just any cup, mutt. This is the Mortal cup."

It was Jordan's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"You insolent fool." Clary back handed Jordan, snapping his face to the side with a crack. "Dispose of him at once."

"No," Sebastian said. "Bring me the cup. Lamashtu, dear, would you please cut your hand?"

With a slight nod of her head, Clary picked up a knife that some how appeared next to the cup and sliced open her palm. Jordan watched in horror as the blood dripped into the cup at a fast pace and the cup lit up brightly. Sebastian copied what Clary did before picking up the cup and bringing it to Jordan's mouth.

* * *

_**A/N: Short again, I know. Sorry. Anyway, the next chapter's setting will be pandemonium... You probably saw how I went back and forth with the names in the 3rd person. That was only to clarify the names. I didn't mean to annoy or confuse any of you... Any who, as you see, the cup isn't just for shadowhunters. I figured, why not give Team Bad more leverage? Jace had his break down. Poor Jace :( He's taking this quite horribly. After the week coming up, I'll go back to long chapters. I'm tired of these short one and I'm sure you are too.**_


	8. Chapter 8

**_Sorry I haven't updated lately. My wifi wasn't working so I was off for quite a while. I'm only doing a short chapter because my computer is whack and I'm extremely tired from working at a barn all day. _**

* * *

**Third Person**

Clary sighed melodramatically. She couldn't believe she was stuck in this situation. It was comical how she was now fighting to save her own life. Usually you'd find her fighting to saved a loved one or the world. Never in her entire life had she planned to be trapped in her own body, fighting to save her memories and herself. It was like the tables of the universe were turned and now they were against her. Not that they were ever with her in the first place. A tapping sound caused Clary to whip her head to the right. Laying on the ground, was a crimson dragon. By the looks of it, it was only a baby. If Clary picked it up, it would profoundly fit in the middle of her palm. It's cute little tail was wagging and hitting the ground. A soft smile played on Clary's lips.

"Why hello there, little dragon." The dragon looked up at Clary and sneezed. Clary giggled and picked it up gently. The dragon licked Clary's hand before slithering up her arm and making himself comfortable. "I'm going to call you Mystery since it's a mystery as to why you are in my sub conscious mind."

Mystery sighed happily and nestled his head in the crook of Clary's neck. Clary clucked her tongue to an odd melody while she walked. Even from afar, she could see her first task looming out from behind a forest. Beyond that stood a beautiful sunset filled with exotic colors. Clary had the urge to draw it, but she knew she didn't have the supplies or time. Her first task didn't look too difficult. From what she could see anyway. There was a huge balance beam that was about sixty feet in the air.

"_I've decided to start you off easy, Clarissa._"

"Fine," she hissed.

Clary made her way hurriedly to the first task. This wasn't going to take very long, she thought to herself.

"_For the first task, you must get across the beam without falling or getting hit with any objects thrown your way._"

"You're throwing things at me?"

Lamashtu laughed. "_Not me, you insolent fool. They will._"

Suddenly, ten familiar faces appeared in front of Clary. Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood, Isabelle Lightwood, Simon Lewis, Luke Graymark, her mother Jocelyn, Valentine Morgenstern, Jonathan Morgenstern, Maia Roberts, and Jordan Kyle. They were all smiling evilly and all holding objects. The objects ranged from small things like pencils, to big things like boulders. Clary's eyes widened as huge axe-like objects swung back and forth on the beam.

"_Good luck._"

Clary cursed, but nonetheless put Mystery down and climbed the ladder. She could hear the _swoosh _of the axes as they went by. Clary cringed every time one flew by. Taking a deep breath, she steadied and braced herself for what she was about to do next. Mustering up all the courage she could, she ran pass one axe. She screamed as it was an extremely close call. Magnus threw the first object. Clary didn't bother with trying to see what it was because she was too busy dodging it. She dove passed the next axe as Alec threw another object. Soon it was like World War III and Clary was dodging objects like there was no tomorrow. The axes started to swing faster and Clary had to chance it. She dove pass the next one which cut her arm and her hair. Clary hissed in pain as blood started to gush out of her wound. It was cut pretty deep.

"_If you can pass the rest of this, I'll heal that for you, Miss Clarissa." _

If this was what Lamashtu considered easy, Clary didn't know if she could take anymore.

* * *

Lamashtu laughed as she played with Clary in her mind. Jonathan wasn't too fond of her doing it, but has yet to stop her. He just glares at her and goes back to planning with Valentine and their new ally, Jordan Kyle. He was an obdient little werewolf. Jordan did whatever he was told and never did anything half assed. Lamashtu didn't like him very much, but Jonathan has stopped her from killing him on many occasions. Every time he walks away from her, he mutters that he wished Clary was back. Lamashtu was hurt deeply, but did nothing of it because he was her master.

Jonathan, while Lamashtu hurt his dear sister, was planning a way to get Clary back. When she returned to her normal state, he would have her drink from the reversed Mortal cup. Then she would be his forever. No one would be able to take her from him. Valentine has his wife and Jonathan would have his. They would live like royals.

* * *

**_PLEASE READ! A/N: Hey guys :D Jonathan's a creeper :) But we already knew that xD Anyway, I would like you guys to be a part of Clary's torture- I mean her tasks. So, if you guys wouldn't mind thinking of some tasks for her to go through. I would give you full credit of course. Just review or if you don't feel comfortable putting your idea as a review, PM me. _**

**_Some things for you guys to think of: _**

**_What is Jonathan up to? _**

**_Will Clary survive this? _**

**_Can Clary retrieve all of her memories before time is up?_**

**_Will lamashtu end up getting her killed?_**

**_How is Jace dealing? _**

**_What will Maia do about Jordan?_**

**_Heads up: Clary will be going to Pandemonium in the upcoming chapters. Jace will see her and shit will go down._**

**_Mystery is my favorite character. I would just like to point that out. _**

**_Spoiler: Mystery has a big part in all of this. The question is... Can Clary do what she has to?_**


	9. Chapter 9

_**PLEASE READ! ALL CREDIT FOR MYSTERY'S DOUBLE LIFE GOES TO JESSARA1. It's like some of you reviewers can read my mind, but I'll still give you credit. :) Sorry if I get any of your names wrong **_

_**Blondie-xox: You'll just have to wait and see :D**_

_**Bunniebisquitz27: Haha I had to end it there. I wanted to see everyone's reactions**_

_**Guest: Please don't die :(**_

_**Venomintheveins: You are very welcome. **_

_**Jessara1: Good thinking. Mystery will reveal himself soon so don't worry. When the time comes, all will be revealed ;) I can't wait for this chapter either. Oh and everyone will be shocked at who Mystery is. That "person" didn't even know himself :) **_

_**Aliherondale333: I can't wait til Pandemonium either! You guys are in for a big surprise. Very very big.**_

_** .fangirl-17: I love your name! But anyway, besides that... That's a really good idea. One thing, if she can't remember them? How will it be a deepest fear? ;) I've already figured that one out after reading your review. So you'll just have to keep wondering. **_

_**Anyway, I just wanted to say... Didn't any of you notice that Jonathan said "Valentine has his wife and I'll have mine"? Doesn't that make you wonder if Jocelyn is alive?! Cause I have a little- okay maybe not little- secret. **_

_**DON'T FORGET TO READ THE SNIPPET OF THE NEXT CHAPTER AT THE END**_

* * *

**Izzy POV **

Everything was disastrous. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't contact Jordan. Maia says something bad has happened to him, but I refuse to believe it. Although, with everything that has happened, I wouldn't doubt it. Jace is a mess. He hasn't left Clary's room since he got home. Magnus wanted to give him something, but Jace refused to open the door. He'd yell and throw something at the door. After Jace falls asleep, Alec and I are taking him back to the Institute. It isn't healthy for him to stay in Clary's room. We are all heartbroken but we need to get past that so we have the strength to save Clary. I have a feeling we won't be able to do that without his help.

"Is he asleep yet?" Alec asked in a whisper.

I nodded. "I think so."

Alec looked at me warily. "Are you sure it's a good idea to take him to Pandemonium tomorrow night?"

"Yeah, we need to start getting his mind focused on hunting demons. That way we'll be able to take him with us when we have to rescue Clary."

It was his turn to nod. "I guess you're right."

I looked at him smugly. "Of course I'm right. Now, come help me bring your _parabatai_ home."

"He's going to be royally pissed."

"I don't care," I hissed.

It didn't take Alec and I too long to get Jace back to the Institute. I would just like to say, he is a heavy bastard. After setting Jace down in his bed, we retreated to our separate rooms. I had fallen easily into a peaceful sleep. I would have liked it to stay that way, but around five in the morning, Jace's piercing scream awoke me from a wonderful dream that I was having about me and Simon.

**Third Person **

Clary was so confused. The once familiar faces were no longer familiar and she didn't know who was talking to her. She was worried about her arm and busy trying not to get killed. There were only two more axes to pass and about one hundred more things to dodge. How wonderful. Mystery, from what she could see sixty feet in the air, was pacing back and forth. His tiny silhouette raced back and forth, actually.

"As soon as I finish, I'll be able to get my arm fixed," Clary whispered and put on a brave face.

The people continued throwing things at Clary as she ran forward. She _just _missed the axe. It would have taken off her head had it not been for the boulder she had to dodge. Catching her breath, Clary got ready to run pass the next axe. Her ears started ringing and her vision started to blur as she stumbled _into _the path of the blade. It sliced the air behind her as she was jostled forward. A force, unknown to her, had pushed her forward. She collapsed at the end and plummeted to her death. Suddenly, the air changed, time slowed, and before Clary knew it, she was standing on the ground. The balance beam was gone and so were those people.

"_I guess you can have your memories back. And I guess your arm can be healed." _

A warmth spread over Clary's body and her arm went back to the way it was before she had to do her first task. She sighed in relief and made her way over to Mystery.

**Mystery POV *the dragon* **

She was so stupid. Could she not see that I was her protector? That I was obviously trying to protect her? Why is she trying to protect _me_?

"_Could it be that she keeps putting you down because you're still a baby?" _My subconscious thought to myself.

I growled inside my head. Clary, with her newly fixed arm, picked me up and I slithered up to her shoulder again. I made myself comfortable and listened to her thoughts to see if she remembered anything yet. It took a while, but everything came rushing back. Clary gasped and stumbled to a tree. She slid down and sat with her head in her hands.

**Clary POV in third person**

Everything... Was so intense and surreal. It was like she was reliving every memory.

_"You thought he was cute, " said Simon, sounding resigned. "Didn't you?"_

_Clary dug her elbow into his ribs, but didn't answer._

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"I feel, " Simon went on, "that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don't you agree?"_

_Clary rolled her eyes and didn't answer; Simon hated trance music. Her attention was on the girl in the white dress. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, her pale dress shone out like a beacon. No wonder the blue-haired boy was following her as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him-even the two dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after him through the crowd._

_Clary slowed her dancing and stared. She could just make out that the shapes were boys, tall and wearing black clothes. She couldn't have said how she knew that they were following the other boy, but she did. She could see it in the way they paced him, their careful watchfulness, the slinking grace of their movements. A small flower of apprehension began to open inside her chest._

_"Meanwhile, " Simon added, "I wanted to tell you that lately I've been cross-dressing. Also, I'm sleeping with your mom. I thought you should know. "_

_The girl had reached the wall, and was opening a door marked no admittance. She beckoned the blue-haired boy after her, and they slipped through the door. It wasn't anything Clary hadn't seen before, a couple sneaking off to the dark corners of the club to make out-but that made it even weirder that they were being followed. She raised herself up on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd. The two guys had stopped at the door and seemed to be conferring with each other. One of them was blond, the other dark-haired. The blond one reached into his jacket and drew out something long and sharp that flashed under the strobing lights. A knife. _

_"Simon!" __Clary shouted, and seized his arm._

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_They're crazy, Clary thought. Actually crazy._

_Jace raised his head and smiled. There was something fierce about the gesture, something that reminded Clary of documentaries she'd watched about lions on the Discovery Channel, the way the big cats would raise their heads and sniff the air for prey. "Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much, " he said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?"_

_The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information, " he said. "I know where Valentine is. "_

_Jace glanced back at Alec, who shrugged. "Valentine's in the ground, " Jace said. "The thing's just toying with us. "_

_Isabelle tossed her hair. "Kill it, Jace, " she said. "It's not going to tell us anything. "_

_Jace raised his hand, and Clary saw dim light spark off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones._

_The bound boy gasped. "Valentine is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it-I know it-I can tell you where he is-"_

_Rage flared suddenly in Jace's icy eyes. "By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you-" Jace turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there. " Clary could take no more. She stepped out from behind the pillar. "Stop!" she cried. "You can't do this. "_

_Jace whirled, so startled that the knife flew from his hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Isabelle and Alec turned along with him, wearing identical expressions of astonishment. The blue-haired boy hung in his bonds, stunned and gaping._

_It was Alec who spoke first. "What's this?" he demanded, looking from Clary to his companions, as if they might know what she was doing there._

_"It's a girl, " Jace said, recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one. " He took a step closer to Clary, squinting as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "A mundie girl, " he said, half to himself. "And she can see us. "_

_"Of course I can see you, " Clary said. "I'm not blind, you know. "_

_"Oh, but you are, " said Jace, bending to pick up his knife. "You just don't know it. " He straightened up. "You'd better get out of here, if you know what's good for you. "_

_"I'm not going anywhere, " Clary said. "If I do, you'll kill him. " She pointed at the boy with the blue hair._

_"That's true, " admitted Jace, twirling the knife between his fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?"_

_"Be-because-, " Clary spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people. "_

_"You're right, " said Jace. "You can't go around killing people. " He pointed at the boy with blue hair, whose eyes were slitted. Clary wondered if he'd fainted. "That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster. "_

_"Jace, " said Isabelle warningly. "That's enough. "_

_"You're crazy, " Clary said, backing away from him. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second. " "_

_"She's lying, " said Alec, but there was doubt on his face. "Jace, do you-"_

_He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the pillar, and flung himself on Jace._

_They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue-haired boy tearing at Jace with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Clary backed up, wanting to run, but her feet caught on a loop of wiring and she went down, knocking the breath out of her chest. She could hear Isabelle shrieking. Rolling over, Clary saw the blue-haired boy sitting on Jace's chest. Blood gleamed at the tips of his razorlike claws._

_Isabelle and Alec were running toward them, Isabelle brandishing a whip in her hand. The blue-haired boy slashed at Jace with claws extended. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The blue-haired boy lunged again-and Isabelle's whip came down across his back. He shrieked and fell to the side._

_Swift as a flick of Isabelle's whip, Jace rolled over. There was a blade gleaming in his hand. He sank the knife into the blue-haired boy's chest. Blackish liquid exploded around the hilt. The boy arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting. With a grimace Jace stood up. His black shirt was blacker now in some places, wet with blood. He looked down at the twitching form at his feet, reached down, and yanked out the knife. The hilt was slick with black fluid._

_The blue-haired boy's eyes flickered open. His eyes, fixed on Jace, seemed to burn. Between his teeth, he hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all. "_

_Jace seemed to snarl. The boy's eyes rolled back. His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller until he vanished entirely._

_Clary scrambled to her feet, kicking free of the electrical wiring. She began to back away. None of them was paying attention to her. Alec had reached Jace and was holding his arm, pulling at the sleeve, probably trying to get a good look at the wound. Clary turned to run-and found her way blocked by Isabelle, whip in hand. The gold length of it was stained with dark fluid. She flicked it toward Clary, and the end wrapped itself around her wrist and jerked tight. Clary gasped with pain and surprise._

_"Stupid little mundie, " Isabelle said between her teeth. "You could have gotten Jace killed. "_

_"He's crazy, " Clary said, trying to pull her wrist back. The whip bit deeper into her skin. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police-"_

_"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body, " said Jace. Cradling his arm, he picked his way across the cable-strewn floor toward Clary. Alec followed behind him, face screwed into a scowl._

_Clary glanced at the spot where the boy had disappeared from, and said nothing. There wasn't even a smear of blood there-nothing to show that the boy had ever existed._

_"They return to their home dimensions when they die, " said Jace. "In case you were wondering. "_

_"Jace, " Alec hissed. "Be careful. "_

_Jace drew his arm away. A ghoulish freckling of blood marked his face. He still reminded her of a lion, with his wide-spaced, light-colored eyes, and that tawny gold hair. "She can see us, Alec, " he said. "She already knows too much. "_

_"So what do you want me to do with her?" Isabelle demanded._

_"Let her go, " Jace said quietly. Isabelle shot him a surprised, almost angry look, but didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing Clary's arm. She rubbed her sore wrist and wondered how the hell she was going to get out of there._

_"Maybe we should bring her back with us, " Alec said. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her. "_

_"No way are we bringing her to the Institute, " said Isabelle. "She's amundie. "_

_"Or is she?" said Jace softly. His quiet tone was worse than Isabelle's snapping or Alec's anger. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you-"_

_"My name is not 'little girl, ' " Clary interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about. "Don't you? said a voice in the back of her head. You saw that boy vanish into thin air. Jace isn't crazy -you just wish he was. "I don't believe in-in demons, or whatever you-"_

_"Clary?" It was Simon's voice. She whirled around. He was standing by the storage room door. One of the burly bouncers who'd been stamping hands at the front door was next to him. "Are you okay?" He peered at her through the gloom. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys-you know, the ones with the knives?"_

_Clary stared at him, then looked behind her, where Jace, Isabelle, and Alec stood, Jace still in his bloody shirt with the knife in his hand. He grinned at her and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug. Clearly he wasn't surprised that neither Simon nor the bouncer could see them._

_Somehow neither was Clary. Slowly she turned back to Simon, knowing how she must look to him, standing alone in a damp storage room, her feet tangled in bright plastic wiring cables. "I thought they went in here, " she said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry. " She glanced from Simon, whose expression was changing from worried to embarrassed, to the bouncer, who just looked annoyed. "It was a mistake. "_

_Behind her, Isabelle giggled._

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_The door flew open._

_A slender man standing in the doorway regarded them curiously. It was Isabelle who recovered herself first, flashing a brilliant smile. "Magnus? Magnus Bane?"_

_"That would be me." The man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense black spikes. Clary guessed from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully. "Children of the Nephilim," he said. "Well, well. I don't recall inviting you. "_

_Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a white flag. "I have an invitation. These"-she indicated the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm-"are my friends."_

_Magnus plucked the invitation out of her hand and looked at it with fastidious distaste. "I must have been drunk," he said. He threw the door open. "Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests. "_

_Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. "Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?"_

_"Even then." Magnus's hand shot out, so fast it was barely a blur. He plucked the stele out of Jace's hand-Clary hadn't even realized he was holding it-and held it up. Jace looked faintly abashed. "As for this," Magnus said, sliding it into Jace's jeans pocket, "keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter."_

_Magnus grinned and started up the stairs, leaving a surprised-looking Jace holding the door. "Come on," he said, waving the rest of them inside. "Before anyone thinks it's my party. "_

_They pushed past Jace, laughing nervously. Only Isabelle stopped to shake her head. "Try not to piss him off, please. Then he won't help us."_

_Jace looked bored. "I know what I'm doing."_

_"I hope so." Isabelle flounced past him in a swirl of skirts._

_Magnus's apartment was at the top of a long flight of rickety stairs. Simon hurried to catch up with Clary, who was regretting having put her hand on the banister to steady herself. It was sticky with something that glowed a faint and sickly green._

_"Yech, " said Simon, and offered her a corner of his T-shirt to wipe her hand on. She did. "Is everything all right? You seem-distracted. "_

_"He just looks so familiar. Magnus, I mean."_

_"You think he goes to St. Xavier's?"_

_"Very funny." She looked at him sourly._

_"You're right. He's too old to be a student. I think I had him for chem last year."_

_Clary laughed out loud. Immediately Isabelle was beside her, breathing down her neck. "Am I missing something funny? Simon?"_

_Simon had the grace to look embarrassed, but said nothing. Clary muttered, "You're not missing anything," and dropped behind them. Isabelle's lug-soled boots were starting to hurt her feet. By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was limping, but she forgot the pain as soon as she walked through Magnus's front door._

_The loft was huge and almost totally empty of furniture. Floor-to-ceiling windows were smeared with a thick film of dirt and paint, blocking out most of the ambient light from the street. Big metal pillars wound with colored lights held up an arched, sooty ceiling. Doors torn off their hinges and laid across dented metal garbage cans made a makeshift bar at one end of the room. A lilac-skinned woman in a metallic bustier was ranging drinks along the bar in tall, harshly colored glasses that tinted the fluid inside them: blood red, cyanosis blue, poison green. Even for a New York bartender she worked with an amazingly speedy efficiency-probably helped along by the fact that she had a second set of long, graceful arms to go with the first. Clary was reminded of Luke's Indian goddess statue._

_The rest of the crowd was just as strange. A good-looking boy with wet green-black hair grinned at her over a platter of what looked like raw fish. His teeth were sharp and serrated, like a shark's. Beside him stood a girl with long dirty-blond hair, braided with flowers. Under the skirt of her short green dress, her feet were webbed like a frog's. A group of young women so pale Clary wondered if they were wearing white stage makeup sipped scarlet liquid too thick to be wine from fluted crystal glasses. The center of the room was packed with bodies dancing to the pounding beat that bounced off the walls, though Clary couldn't see a band anywhere._

_"You like the party?"_

_She turned to see Magnus lounging against one of the pillars. His eyes shone in the darkness. Glancing around, she saw that Jace and the others were gone, swallowed up by the crowd._

_She tried to smile. "Is it in honor of anything?"_

_"My cat's birthday."_

_"Oh." She glanced around. "Where's your cat?"_

_He unhitched himself from the pillar, looking solemn. "I don't know. He ran away."_

_Clary was spared responding to this by the reappearance of Jace and Alec. Alec looked sullen as usual. Jace was wearing a strand of tiny glowing flowers around his neck and seemed pleased with himself. "Where are Simon and Isabelle?" Clary said._

_"On the dance floor." He pointed. She could just see them on the edge of the packed square of bodies. Simon was doing what he usually did in lieu of dancing, which was to bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, looking uncomfortable. Isabelle was slinking in a circle around him, sinuous as a snake, trailing her fingers across his chest. She was looking at him as if she were planning to drag him off into a corner to have sex. Clary hugged her arms around herself, her bracelets clanking together. If they dance any closer together, they won't have to go off in a corner to have sex._

_"Look," Jace said, turning to Magnus, "we really need to talk to-"_

_"MAGNUS BANE!" The deep, booming voice belonged to a surprisingly short man who looked to be in his early thirties. He was compactly muscular, with a bald head shaved smooth and a pointed goatee. He leveled a trembling finger at Magnus. "Someone just poured holy water into the gas tank on my bike. It's ruined. Destroyed. All the pipes are melted. "_

_"Melted?" murmured Magnus. "How dreadful."_

_"I want to know who did it." The man bared his teeth, showing long pointed canines. Clary stared in fascination. They didn't look at all the way she'd imagined vampire fangs: These were as thin and sharp as needles. "I thought you swore there'd be no wolf-men here tonight, Bane."_

_"I invited none of the Moon's Children," Magnus said, examining his glittery nails. "Precisely because of your stupid little feud. If any of them decided to sabotage your bike, they weren't a guest of mine, and are therefore" He offered a winsome smile. "Not my responsibility."_

_The vampire roared with rage, jabbing his finger toward Magnus. "Are you trying to tell me that-"_

_Magnus's glitter-coated index finger twitched just a fraction, so slightly that Clary almost thought he hadn't moved at all. Mid-roar the vampire gagged and clutched at his throat. His mouth worked, but no sound came out._

_"You've worn out your welcome," Magnus said lazily, opening his eyes very wide. Clary saw, with a jolt of surprise, that they had vertical slit pupils, like a cat's. "Now go." He splayed the fingers of his hand, and the vampire turned as smartly as if someone had grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. He marched back into the crowd, heading toward the door._

_Jace whistled under his breath. "That was impressive."_

_"You mean that little hissy fit?" Magnus cast his eyes toward the ceiling. "I know. What is his problem?"_

_Alec made a choking noise. After a moment Clary recognized it as laughter. He ought to do that more often._

_"We put the holy water in his gas tank, you know," he said._

_"ALEC," said Jace. "Shut up."_

_"I assumed that," said Magnus, looking amused. "Vindictive little bastards, aren't you? You know their bikes run on demon energies. I doubt he'll be able to repair it. "_

_"One less leech with a fancy ride," said Jace. "My heart bleeds."_

_"I heard some of them can make their bikes fly," put in Alec, who looked animated for once. He was almost smiling._

_"Merely an old witches' tale," said Magnus, his cat's eyes glittering. "So is that why you wanted to crash my party? Just to wreck some bloodsucker bikes?"_

_"No." Jace was all business again. "We need to talk to you. Preferably somewhere private."_

_Magnus raised an eyebrow. Damn, Clary thought, another one. "Am I in trouble with the Clave?"_

_"No," said Jace._

_"Probably not," said Alec. "Ow!" He glared at Jace, who had kicked him sharply in the ankle._

_"No," Jace repeated. "We can talk to you under the seal of the Covenant. If you help us, anything you say will be confidential."_

_"And if I don't help you?"_

_Jace spread his hands wide. The rune tattoos on his palms stood out stark and black. "Maybe nothing. Maybe a visit from the Silent City."_

_Magnus's voice was honey poured over shards of ice. "That's quite a choice you're offering me, little Shadowhunter."_

_"It's no choice at all, " said Jace._

_"Yes," said the warlock. "That's exactly what I meant."_

_Magnus's bedroom was a riot of color: canary-yellow sheets and bedspread draped over a mattress on the floor, electric-blue vanity table strewn with more pots of paint and makeup than Isabelle's. Rainbow velvet curtains hid the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a tangled wool rug covered the floor._

_"Nice place," said Jace, drawing aside a heavy swag of curtain. "Guess it pays well, being the High Warlock of Brooklyn?"_

_"It pays," Magnus said. "Not much of a benefit package, though. No dental." He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. When he crossed his arms, his T-shirt rode up, showing a strip of flat golden stomach unmarked by a navel. "So," he said. "What's on your devious little minds?"_

_"It's not them, actually," Clary said, finding her voice before Jace could reply. "I'm the one who wanted to talk to you."_

_Magnus turned his inhuman eyes on her. "You are not one of them, " he said. "Not of the Clave. But you can see the Invisible World."_

_"My mother was one of the Clave, " Clary said. It was the first time she had said it out loud and known it to be true. "But she never told me. She kept it a secret. I don't know why."_

_"So ask her."_

_"I can't. She's" Clary hesitated. "She's gone."_

_"And your father?"_

_"He died before I was born."_

_Magnus exhaled irritably. "As Oscar Wilde once said, 'To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.' "_

_Clary heard Jace make a small hissing sound, like air being sucked through his teeth. She said, "I didn't lose my mother. She was taken from me. By Valentine."_

_"I don't know any Valentine, " said Magnus, but his eyes flickered like wavering candle flames, and Clary knew he was lying. "I'm sorry for your tragic circumstances, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. If you could tell me-"_

_"She can't tell you, because she doesn't remember, " Jace said sharply. "Someone erased her memories. So we went to the Silent City to see what the Brothers could pull out of her head. They got two words. I think you can guess what they were."_

_There was a short silence. Finally, Magnus let his mouth turn up at the corner. His smile was bitter. "My signature," he said. "I knew it was folly when I did it. An act of hubris"_

_"You signed my mind?" Clary said in disbelief._

_Magnus raised his hand, tracing the fiery outlines of letters against the air. When he dropped his hand, they hung there, hot and golden, making the painted lines of his eyes and mouth burn with reflected light, magnus bane._

_"I was proud of my work on you," he said slowly, looking at Clary. "So clean. So perfect. What you saw you would forget, even as you saw it. No image of pixie or goblin or long-legged beastie would remain to trouble your blameless mortal sleep. It was the way she wanted it."_

_Clary's voice was thin with tension. "The way who wanted it?"_

_Magnus sighed, and at the touch of his breath, the fire-letters sifted away to glowing ash. Finally he spoke-and though she was not surprised, though she had known exactly what he was going to say, still she felt the words like a blow against her heart._

_"Your mother," he said._

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"Jace, " she whispered. "What are you doing?"_

_He had placed his hands on the stone floor and was moving them back and forth rapidly, as if searching for something, his fingertips stirring up dust. "Looking for weapons."_

_"Here?"_

_"They'd be hidden, usually around the altar. Kept for our use in case of emergencies."_

_"And this is what, some kind of deal you have with the Catholic Church?"_

_"Not specifically. Demons have been on Earth as long as we have. They're all over the world, in their different forms-Greek daemons, Persiandaevas, Hinduasuras, Japaneseoni. Most belief systems have some method of incorporating both their existence and the fight against them. Shadowhunters cleave to no single religion, and in turn all religions assist us in our battle. I could as easily have gone for help to a Jewish synagogue or a Shinto temple, or-Ah. Here it is." He brushed dust aside as she knelt down beside him. Carved into one of the octagonal stones before the altar was a rune. Clary recognized it, almost as easily as if she were reading a word in English. It was the rune that meant "Nephilim."_

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_She ignored him. "Hodge says he's on his way and he hopes you can both manage to cling to your flickering sparks of life until he gets here," she told Simon and Jace. "Or something like that."_

_"I wish he'd hurry," Jace said crossly. He was sitting up in bed against a pair of fluffed white pillows, still wearing his filthy clothes._

_"Why? Does it hurt?" Clary asked._

_"No. I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it's less of a threshold and more of a large and tastefully decorated foyer. But I do get easily bored." He squinted at her. "Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you'd get dressed up in a nurse's outfit and give me a sponge bath?"_

_"Actually, I think you misheard," Clary said. "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."_

_Jace looked involuntarily over at Simon, who smiled at him widely. "As soon as I'm back on my feet, handsome."_

_"I knew we should have left you a rat," said Jace._

_Clary laughed and went over to Simon, who seemed acutely uncomfortable surrounded by dozens of pillows and with blankets heaped over his legs._

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"You must have relatives you can stay with?" There was a tinge of desperation in his voice._

_"No. Besides, Hodge wants me to stay," she said shortly._

_"He can't possibly. I mean, not after what you've done-"_

_"What I've done?"_

_He swallowed hard. "You almost got Jace killed."_

_"I almost-What are you talking about?"_

_"Running off after your friend like that-do you know how much danger you put him in? Do you know-"_

_"Him? You mean Jace?" Clary cut him off in midsentence. "For your information the whole thing was his idea. He asked Magnus where the lair was. He went to the church to get weapons. If I hadn't come with him, he would have gone anyway."_

_"You don't understand," Alec said. "You don't know him. I know him. He thinks he has to save the world; he'd be glad to kill himself trying. Sometimes I think he even wants to die, but that doesn't mean you should encourage him to do it."_

_"I don't get it," she said. "Jace is a Nephilim. This is what you do, you rescue people, you kill demons, you put yourselves in danger. How was last night any different?"_

_Alec's control shattered. "Because he left me behind!" he shouted. "Normally I'd be with him, covering him, watching his back, keeping him safe. But you-you're dead weight, a mundane." He spit the word out as if it were an obscenity._

_"No," Clary said. "I'm not. I'm Nephilim-just like you."_

_His lip curled up at the corner. "Maybe," he said. "But with no training, no nothing, you're still not much use, are you? Your mother brought you up in the mundane world, and that's where you belong. Not here, making Jace act like-like he isn't one of us. Making him break his oath to the Clave, making him break the Law-"_

_"News flash," Clary snapped. "I don' t make Jace do anything. He does what he wants. You ought to know that."_

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"I'm going back to bed." Clary reached for the doorknob._

_He slid nimbly between her and the door. "I'm here," he said, "because Hodge reminded me it was your birthday. "_

_Clary exhaled in exasperation. "Not until tomorrow."_

_"That's no reason not to start celebrating now."_

_She eyed him. "You're avoiding Alec and Isabelle."_

_He nodded. "Both of them are trying to pick fights with me."_

_"For the same reason?"_

_"I couldn't tell. " He glanced furtively up and down the hallway. "Hodge, too. Everyone wants to talk to me. Except you. I bet you don't want to talk to me."_

_"No," said Clary. "I want to eat. I'm starving."_

_He brought his hand out from behind his back. In it was a slightly crumpled paper bag. "I sneaked some food from the kitchen when Isabelle wasn't looking."_

_Clary grinned. "A picnic? It's a little late for Central Park, don't you think? It's full of-"_

_He waved a hand. "Faeries. I know."_

_"I was going to say muggers," said Clary. "Though I pity the mugger who goes after you."_

_"That is a wise attitude, and I commend you for it," said Jace, looking gratified. "But I wasn't thinking of Central Park. How about the greenhouse?"_

_"Now? At night? Won't it be-dark?"_

_He smiled as if at a secret. "Come on. I'll show you." _

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"Anything?" She laughed. "Like what kind of anything did you want?"_

_"Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti."_

_"But he didn't let you, right?"_

_"No, that's the thing. He did. He said it wasn't expensive, and why not if that was what I wanted? He had the servants fill a bath with boiling water and pasta, and when it cooled down " He shrugged. "I took a bath in it."_

_Servants?_

_Clary thought. Out loud she said, "How was it?"_

_"Slippery."_

_"I'll bet." She tried to picture him as a little boy, giggling, up to his ears in pasta. The image wouldn't form. Surely Jace never giggled, not even at the age of five. "What else did you ask for?"_

_"Weapons, mostly," he said, "which I'm sure doesn't surprise you. Books. I read a lot on my own."_

_"You didn't go to school?"_

_"No," he said, and now he spoke slowly, almost as if they were approaching a topic he didn't want to discuss._

_"But your friends-"_

_"I didn't have friends," he said. "Besides my father. He was all I needed."_

_She stared at him. "No friends at all?"_

_He met her look steadily. "The first time I saw Alec," he said, "when I was ten years old, that was the first time I'd ever met another child my own age. The first time I had a friend."_

_She dropped her gaze. Now an image was forming, unwelcome, in her head: She thought of Alec, the way he had looked at her. He wouldn't say that._

_"Don't feel sorry for me," Jace said, as if guessing her thoughts, though it hadn't been him she'd been feeling sorry for. "He gave me the best education, the best training. He took me all over the world. London. Saint Petersburg. Egypt. We used to love to travel." His eyes were dark. "I haven't been anywhere since he died. Nowhere but New York."_

_"You're lucky," Clary said. "I've never been outside this state in my life. My mom wouldn't even let me go on field trips to D. C. I guess I know why now," she added ruefully._

_"She was afraid you'd freak out? Start seeing demons in the White House?"_

_She nibbled a piece of chocolate. "There are demons in the White House?"_

_"I was kidding," said Jace. "I think." He shrugged philosophically. "I'm sure someone would have mentioned it."_

_"I think she just didn't want me to get too far away from her. My mom, I mean. After my dad died, she changed a lot." Luke's voice echoed in her mind. You've never been the same since it happened, but Clary isn't Jonathan._

_Jace cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do you remember your father?"_

_She shook her head. "No. He died before I was born. "_

_"You're lucky," he said. "That way you don't miss him."_

_From anyone else it would have been an appalling thing to say, but there was no bitterness in his voice for a change, only an ache of loneliness for his own father. "Does it go away?" she asked. "Missing him, I mean?"_

_He looked at her obliquely, but didn't answer. "Are you thinking of your mother?"_

_No. She wouldn't think of her mother that way. "Of Luke, actually."_

_"Not that that's actually his name." He took a thoughtful bite of apple and said, "I've been thinking about him. Something about his behavior doesn't add up-"_

_"He's a coward." Clary's voice was bitter. "You heard him. He won't go against Valentine. Not even for my mother. "_

_"But that's exactly-" A long clanging reverberation interrupted him. Somewhere, a bell was tolling. "Midnight," said Jace, setting the knife down. He got to his feet, holding his hand out to pull her up beside him. His fingers were slightly sticky with apple juice._

_"Now, watch."_

_His gaze was fixed on the green shrub they'd been sitting beside, with its dozens of shiny closed buds. She started to ask him what she was supposed to be looking at, but he held up a hand to forestall her. His eyes were shining. "Wait," he said._

_The leaves on the shrub hung still and motionless. Suddenly one of the tightly closed buds began to quiver and tremble. It swelled to twice its size and burst open. It was like watching a speeded-up film of a flower blooming: the delicate green sepals opening outward, releasing the clustered petals inside. They were dusted with pale gold pollen as light as talcum._

_"Oh!" said Clary, and looked up to find Jace watching her. "Do they bloom every night?"_

_"Only at midnight," he said. "Happy birthday, Clarissa Fray."_

_She was oddly touched. "Thank you."_

_"I have something for you," he said. He dug into his pocket and brought out something, which he pressed into her hand. It was a gray stone, slightly uneven, worn to smoothness in spots._

_"Huh," said Clary, turning it over in her fingers. "You know, when most girls say they want a big rock, they don't mean, you know, literally a big rock."_

_"Very amusing, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, precisely. All Shadowhunters have a witchlight rune-stone. "_

_"Oh." She looked at it with renewed interest, closing her fingers around it as she'd seen Jace do in the cellar. She wasn't sure, but she thought she could see a glint of light peeking out through her fingers._

_"It will bring you light," said Jace, "even among the darkest shadows of this world and others."_

_She slipped it into her pocket. "Well, thanks. It was nice of you to give me anything." The tension between them seemed to press down on her like humid air. "Better than a bath in spaghetti any day."_

_He said darkly, "If you share that little bit of personal information with anyone, I may have to kill you."_

_"Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside the dryer with the clothes," Clary said. "The difference is, she didn't let me. "_

_"Probably because going around and around inside a dryer can be fatal," Jace pointed out, "whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it."_

_The midnight flower was already shedding petals. They drifted toward the floor, glimmering like slivers of starlight. "When I was twelve, I wanted a tattoo, " Clary said. "My mom wouldn't let me have that, either. "_

_Jace didn't laugh. "Most Shadowhunters get their first Marks at twelve. It must have been in your blood. "_

_"Maybe. Although I doubt most Shadowhunters get a tattoo of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on their left shoulder. "_

_Jace looked baffled. "You wanted a turtle on your shoulder?"_

_"I wanted to cover my chicken pox scar." She pulled the strap of the tank top aside slightly, showing the star-shaped white mark at the top of her shoulder. "See?"_

_He looked away. "It's getting late," he said. "We should go back downstairs. "_

_Clary pulled her strap back up awkwardly. As if he wanted to see her stupid scars._

_The next words tumbled out of her mouth without any volition on her part. "Have you and Isabelle ever-dated?"_

_Now he did look at her. The moonlight leached the color out of his eyes. They were more silver than gold now. "Isabelle?" he said blankly._

_"I thought-" Now she felt even more awkward. "Simon was wondering."_

_"Maybe he should ask her."_

_"I'm not sure he wants to," Clary said. "Anyway, never mind. It's none of my business."_

_He smiled unnervingly. "The answer is no. I mean, there may have been a time when one or the other of us considered it, but she's almost a sister to me. It would be strange."_

_"You mean Isabelle and you never-"_

_"Never," said Jace._

_"She hates me," observed Clary._

_"No, she doesn't," he said, to her surprise. "You just make her nervous, because she's always been the only girl in a crowd of adoring boys, and now she isn't anymore. "_

_"But she's so beautiful."_

_"So are you," said Jace, "and very different from how she is, and she can't help but notice that. She's always wanted to be small and delicate, you know. She hates being taller than most boys. "_

_Clary said nothing to this, because she had nothing to say. Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful. She stared at him._

_"We should probably go downstairs," he said again. She was sure she was making him uncomfortable with the staring, but she didn't seem to be able to stop._

_"All right," she said finally. To her relief, her voice sounded normal. It was a further relief to look away from him as she turned around. The moon, directly overhead now, lit everything nearly to daylight brightness. In between one step and another she saw a white spark struck off something on the floor: It was the knife Jace had been using to cut apples, lying on its side. She jerked hastily back to avoid stepping on it, and her shoulder bumped his-he put a hand out to steady her, just as she turned to apologize, and then she was somehow in the circle of his arm and he was kissing her._

_It was at first almost as if he hadn't wanted to kiss her: His mouth was hard on hers, unyielding; then he put both arms around her and pulled her against him. His lips softened. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart, taste the sweetness of apples still on his mouth. She wound her hands into his hair, as she'd wanted to do since the first time she'd seen him. His hair curled around her fingers, silky and fine. Her heart was hammering, and there was a rushing sound in her ears, like beating wings-_

_Jace drew away from her with a muffled exclamation, though his arms were still around her. "Don't panic, but we've got an audience. "_

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"Alaric," Clary said._

_"Yes?"_

_"I'm sorry I threw a knife at you."_

_"Don't be. It was a well-placed blow. "_

_She tried to look past him. "Where's Luke?"_

_"I'm here," Luke said. Alaric turned. Luke was coming up the steps, sliding his sword back into its sheath, which was strapped to his side, beneath his jacket. The blade was black and sticky. _

o.o.O.O.o.o.O.O.o.o

_"How did you get out of the house without Jace?" I asked as we turned the corner, heading back to Magnus's apartment._

_Magnus chuckled while Simon smirked along with Izzy and Alec. Luke shook his head in amusement. "Ducks," Alec answered. "We told him there was an emergency with ducks."_

_I giggled. "Of course you did." They laughed. Magnus opened the door to his apartment to find Jace fighting with Chairman Meow. He had scratches on his face and arms. "Uh, Jace? What's going on?"_

_Jace narrowed his eyes at me. "They," he pointed to the others. "Said you went to bed. So when they left I went in and tried to cuddle with you. Yeah, well instead of you, I cuddled with a temperamental cat. Him and Church would be best friends."_

_Everyone burst out laughing. "You... cuddled... with... Chairman Meow?" I said between fits of laughter._

_Jace grunted before turning around and stomping away like a five year old. "Clare bear, I think you should go talk with the baby," Alec said, chuckling._

_With one last laugh, I spun on my heel and headed in the direction that Jace went._

_There he sat, sulking on my bed with his arms crossed and Chairman Meow scratches all over him. I sauntered over and straddled him. "Is someone having a bad day?" I teased._

_"Better now that you're here." He grinned cheekily._

_"How are the scratches?" I asked._

_He shrugged. "They burn, but I'll just use an iratze."_

* * *

**_Next chapter will be more writing and no memories so you'll get a full 2,000+ word chapter :) This one is basically 1,000+ words with memories _**

**_Haha Can any of you guess who Mystery is? It'll be a shocker. For the ones who don't end up guessing it. Next chapter will be Pandemonium :) Yay! I know all of you are excited to see what goes down. Too bad I already know. I've been planning this 'little' scene for almost two months. I say 'little' because the HUGE surprise will happen in a short period of time. Sad but true. You all will be happy though. Maybe. You'll be confused, then sad, than happy, then mad at me. Yay! Oh well. Those emotions should be along the lines of what you're feeling._**

**_Most memories are from the books. As you can so plainly see_**

**_UNTIL NEXT TIME_**

**_NEXT TIME ON FALLEN: _**_Isabelle sighed as she watched Jace throw the sword down in what looked like frustration, and run off. What Isabelle didn't know was that Jace had seen a certain little red head's mane of hair. He wasn't throwing the sword down in frustration, he was throwing it down in confusion and a little bit of anger. _

_As soon as he was close enough, he yelled, "Clary!"_


	10. Chapter 10

**PLEASE READ: I am so sorry for not updating sooner. I've been off my game lately but that is no excuse. Again, I am so very sorry. Hopefully, I'll be getting up a better chapter soon. BTW some of you got it right... Mystery's mystery person will be revealed soon. And since you've all been waiting patiently, this chapter will solely focus on Pandemonium **

* * *

Clary felt relieved that she remembered some things. Mystery kept slithering up and down her arm making it hard to forget that she was stuck in her own mind battling for control. He suddenly stopped and made himself comfortable once again on her shoulder. Clary chuckled softly and continued down the long, hard, treacherous path towards regaining full control over her body.

Out of nowhere, Clary felt an odd pulling sensation. She tried to fight against it, but the momentum of the pull just kept getting stronger. Mystery seemed to sense something because he started freaking out. Clary didn't know what was happening, and she felt her control slipping away. Soon, Clary was looking out of her own eyes. Excitement and happiness pulsed through Clary. She didn't understand what had happened but she doesn't have one problem with it.

A voice inside her head that sounded all too familiar spoke to her. "_I've only managed to gain you until midnight in your body. You will notice some changes, but there was nothing I could do about that._" _  
_

Clary thanked the voice. This was more than she could ever ask for. She was back in her own body until midnight. Maybe Clary should find a clock so she knew for sure how long she had. And a mirror. Clary wanted to know what the familiar voice was talking about. What changes happened? When Clary gets her body back for real will they stay?

She sighed and looked around. She was at Pandemonium; in the girls bathroom. There was surely no clock, but there were plenty of mirrors. Clary rushed over to one and her jaw dropped. She was wearing a deep violet cocktail dress that stopped a few inches above her knee. Clary could tell she was taller, and that her bust had gotten larger. A lot larger. Her red hair cascaded down her back in neat ringlets. She looked amazing. To her, she's never looked that good in her life. Sighing happily, Clary made her way out of the girls bathroom and to the dance floor. To make her day, she saw her friends. Magnus and Alec were sitting together looking grim.

"I don't understand what Isabelle's plan is. Jace is never going to get over her," Magnus muttered.

Alec nodded with a sigh. "She's acting like it didn't just happen. It's like it didn't really bother her."

"She hides everything, Alexander. It hurts her to know that her _parabatai _was taken over by a demon."

"You're right."

"Like always," Magnus chimed.

Clary felt guilty. She couldn't help it. _Should I make myself know_? Clary thought to herself. Well, she did want to know what time it was. Clary sneaked into the booth behind the couple and started to talk. "Do either of you know what time it is?"

Magnus, without realizing who it was, replied in a bored tone. "Eleven fifty." Realization dawned on him and he recognized the voice. "Cl-"

Clary cursed. "Don't turn around! I can't draw attention to myself. Sadly, I only have until midnight before Lamashtu gains control again."

"So what are you doing here?"

"I have no idea." Clary turned around and smiled. "I know it hasn't been long, but I really missed you guys."

Magnus and Alec dared to turn around. They eyed her carefully. Both of their jaws dropped open. "You look amazing."

"Not that you didn't look amazing before."

Clary chuckled. "Don't tell anyone else I was here."

They both nodded before Clary slipped away. She possibly had only five minutes left. Clary pushed through the crowd. When Lamashtu takes control again, she doesn't want to be near people. It wouldn't be safe for them. Clary ran faster, well as fast as she could in heels. Growing tired of almost falling and breaking her ankle, Clary slipped off the shoes before she started running again.

o.O.o

Isabelle sighed as she watched Jace throw the sword down in what looked like frustration, and run off. What Isabelle didn't know was that Jace had seen a certain little red head's mane of hair. He wasn't throwing the sword down in frustration, he was throwing it down in confusion and a little bit of anger.

As soon as he was close enough, he yelled, "Clary!"

Hearing Jace's familiar voice, Clary turned to look at him. She smiled softly before the panic and fear started to settle in. She only had minutes let before Lamashtu took control over her body again. Clary was surprised she even got through. Even if it was only for a little while. Feeling that Lamashtu was making a come back, Clary did the only thing she could think of.

"Jace, I'm so sorry. J-just promise you won't forget me," Clary practically implored.

"Clary," he started hesitantly. "What's going on?"

"Don't forget me. I love you." Then she turned and ran. Ran so hard and so fast that she thought she was going to pass out from exhaustion.

**Izzy POV *more than a few Hours earlier* **

I quickly got out of bed and made my way to Jace's room. Why had he screamed? Is he hurt? Alec met me in front of Jace's door. We shared a look before pushing the door open. There Jace sat with his head in his hands, sobbing.

"Jace, what's going on? Are you okay?" I rushed to his side in an instant.

His breathing was ragged. "N-nightmares," he whispered. "Cl-Clary was dead. Sh-she died in my arms. They killed her."

"Oh, Jace." Alec sat down on the bed next to me. "Let's go train and then we can go to Pandemonium. I heard that there were some demons heading there tonight."

I gave Alec a look that should have read 'Help me get him out of this damn room'. Fortunately, it worked. Alec looked at me sternly before shaking his head. I did the immature thing and stuck my tongue out at him. Then I grinned darkly before grabbing Jace's legs and pulling him out of bed.

"Izzy, what are you- Oomph!" Jace hit the floor with a thump.

"Bet you can't get me," I teased.

Jace's eyes narrowed in anger. He got up and stalked forward. I laughed before running away towards the training room.

For the rest of the day Jace fought me with everything he had in him. Guess I really made him mad. Maybe he was tired. Yeah, let's go with that.

It was one hour to eleven when I decided to get ready. I didn't need as much time as I usually would because I've had time to pick everything out. My makeup was already done so all I had to do was get dressed and do my hair. My hair wouldn't take long because I was just straightening before tying it up. I was going to dress in an opened back halter dress that was a deep red, almost the color of blood but not quite. Sighing deeply, I took my sweet ass time getting everything done. It was five to eleven when I finally finished. I grabbed a pair of black flats from my closet. I wasn't really feeling the whole deal with the heels. When I was straightening my hair, I had burnt my hand five times and at one point I had burnt my cheek. So now there was an angry red mark that stretched across my cheek. I made my way downstairs to find Jace and Alec standing by the elevator. Both of them looked at my feet and gave me looks of question.

"I just wasn't feeling it today, okay?" I pushed them out of my way and went into the elevator.

The boys flanked my sides. The elevator gave its usual 'ding' before opening to let us out. We slowly walked outside to meet Magnus and Simon. They were conversing about something, but as soon as they saw us they shut up. Once again, I got questioning looks about my outfit. More precisely, the shoes I was wearing. Yes, I will admit I would have loved to wear my heeled boots, but I just wasn't feeling it today. I couldn't bear to wear them or any kind of heel for that matter.

"Just forget the fact that I'm not wearing heels, okay? I just don't want to. Is that such a crime?" I snapped.

Magnus, Alec, Jace, and Simon shook their heads. I nodded at them before going into the street to haul a cab. This time it was all four boys were talking in hushed voices. Probably about my behavior. I ignored them and waited. Why I was in the street was beyond me. I wasn't at all in the right mind.

"You know there are no cabs right, Iz?" Jace said tentatively.

"Oh yeah." I shook my head to clear it of all thoughts. "I totally forgot."

"Are you sure you're okay, Izzy?" Simon asked gently.

"I'm fine," I snapped again. Then I sighed. "I'm sorry. I am just not in the right state of mind. Maybe some demon hunting will help me pull my mind together."

They nodded, unsure. "I already called us a cab," Magnus said. "It should be here shortly."

And just like that, a cab came speeding down the street. It screeched to a stop right next to me. I climbed in and waited patiently for us to get to to Pandemonium. When we got there, I stepped out of the cab and headed inside without waiting for any of the others. Sensing and not seeing any demons, I took a seat at the bar and ordered a shot of vodka. Simon took a seat next to me and stole my shot of vodka. I glared at him. For the next thirty minutes, we talked about Clary and how we were going to deal with the situation. It was about eleven forty when I spotted a green hair demon. He had a scruffy beard, blue eyes, and a scar that ran from his temple to the bottom of his jaw. Smiling, I made my way towards him.

"Hi," I purred seductively.

The demon smirked. "Hey, beautiful."

I ran my hand down his chest. "How about you and I go somewhere private?"

He grinned before taking my hand and leading me to the storage closet. I really hope that Jace and Alec saw me before this guy took me in here. Not that I couldn't handle myself. Now it was my turn to grin. I had this demon right where I wanted him. He gave me a look of confusion. I took this hesitation to my advantage and kicked him in the chest. The heels gave me the upper hand, but with flats, it didn't do much damage. At least I had power to my kick. The demon stumbled backwards. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jace and Alec stalk out of the darkness. They both had amused smirks on their faces. The bastards probably knew what I was thinking. Damn them to hell. I took out two daggers that I sheathed in my thigh halter and threw them at the demon. He was able to dodge one but the other decided to make this demon's forehead its home. I grinned once again as I watched the demon shrivel up. That was too easy. Not as fun as it could have been.

"Too easy. I didn't even get to have any fun. I'm going to sit with Magnus." Alec waved to Jace and I before exiting.

Jace, who had unsheathed his Seraph Blade, walked forward. His eyes widened before he threw down the blade and ran out. I sighed. Just because he's angry doesn't mean he needs to take out his anger on the weapons. They didn't do anything.

* * *

**_Sorry for not updating in so long. I feel like crap about it but there's nothing I can do about it... Except say sorry a million times. I'm so sorry! I wish I had updated sooner, but I've been been working and updating other stories. I wanted to update this story but I've been off my game so I didn't want to write a bad chapter. :( I hope you guys can forgive me for this chapter being so late. Just remember that I love you all :) and I apologize if any of this chapter was crappy. Like I said, I've been off my game lately. For what reason, I don't know. _**

**_But on a better note, The Mortal Instruments comes out in three days! My dad went to the theater and personally got the tickets for me. He didn't want to go online and get them. I've already got my outfit picked out and everything. Who else is going to the premiere? _**


	11. IMPORTANT

Hey guys. I know I haven't updated in a while but I just have a question. Well, I've been writing a chapter but I only thought of asking this today. I am doing a TFiOS challenge for Clary. It's basically TMI characters in the TFiOS universe. Don't worry I did disclaimers and everything, but what do you guys think? If any of you have read it anyway. Just look it up and read the plot then get back to me. I just didn't know what you guys would think. TFiOS = The Fault in Ous Stars by John Green.

XOXOXO

DeathAssassinFaerie


	12. Chapter 12

**PLEASE READ BELOW. ENJOY.**

**Okay so if any of you have read TFiOS then you'll get this, but if you didn't... Well... Just get your tissues ready. In this chapter, we're back in Clary's mind and she has another challenge. This is TFiOS but with TMI characters. The reason I'm doing it like this is because the only way Clary can get passed the challenge is if she lets go. It won't be every single chapter from TFiOS because I'm just using the plot line and stuff. SOme things will obviously change. Just bare with me. I promise this will be a good chapter.** **And I would just like to say, the reason this was so late was because of the length. **

**Guess what? Mystery will be revealed at either the end of this chapter or the beginning of the next. You'll just have to wait and see. **

**PLEASE READ AGAIN: This chapter may be a little confusing because as soon as Clary is thrust into the challenge, she takes on her role as a human, not shadowhunter. There will be no thoughts of shadowhunters, etc. until Clary realises what is happening. But then again, it feels real. So the question is... Will Clary be able to let Jace go or will what isn't real become reality in her mind? **

**And trust me, I spent a lot of time looking this through and writing it. Yes the sentences contain the same info as in the book, but most are reworded to not make them my own but to make them Clary's own. Besides I added different things for some characters. It isn't Hazel going through this. It's Clary. **

**Disclaimer: John Green owns the rights to The Fault in Our Stars and its characters and plots. **

**This challenge will be no more than 2 chapters. Then it gets back to everyone else. **

* * *

"_Have fun in this challenge, dear Clarissa. This is for that little stunt you pulled before." _

Clary closed her eyes and braced herself for what was to come.

o.O.o

With the fact that I devoted most of my abundant free time to thinking about death, spent a whole lot of time in bed, rarely left the apartment, ate infrequently, and read the same book over and over, my mother has come to the conclusion that I am depressed. If you look up side effects of cancer or if you read a cancer booklet, depression is always listed. Depression is a side effect of dying, not cancer. In fact, cancer is a side effect of dying just like almost everything else is. My doctor, Imogen Herondale, informed me and my mother that I should be attending a weekly Support Group. To me, Support Group just featured characters in different states of tumor-driven unwellness. It was as boring and depressing as hell. We met up every Friday in the basement of a church that people called the Institute. There were a few kids from group that lived in the Institute. They let the Support Group use the basement. My best friend, Isabelle Lightwood, lived here with her family. My other best friend, Simon Lewis, has improbable eye cancer. One eye had been cut out when he was a kid, and now he wore the kind of thick glasses that made his eyes (both the real one and the glass one) huge.

Our Support Group Leader, Magnus, was dating Izzy's brother, Alec. Magnus always tried to make everything fun. He liked to add glitter to everything. Sometimes he succeeded in making it fun, but sometimes we just couldn't lift our spirits. After we wheeled or walked ourselves in and drank the lemonade and ate the cookies that were set out for us, we introduced ourselves: Name. Age. Diagnosis. And how we're doing today. I'm Clary, I'd say when they'd get to me. Sixteen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I'm doing we got around the circle, Magnus always asked if anyone wanted to share. And then began the circle jerk of support: everyone talking about fighting and battling and winning and shrinking and scanning. Magnus didn't like to do some things but it was protocol.

Simon, Izzy, and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs. Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or whatever, they'd glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly. I'd shake my head microscopically and exhale in response.

Support Group sucked, but I went for my friends. Sure, if I was selfish I'd probably kick and scream about this whole affair, but I didn't mind. especially the Friday that Izzy's brother's best friend, Jace Herondale, caught my attention. Yes, he was the grandson of my doctor. Jace and I never really talk, but we've seen each other bunches of times at the Lightwood's.

Another reason why I went to Support Group is the same as the reason why I'd once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. The only thing shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen is having a kid who bites it from cancer.

Mom pulled into the huge Institute driveway at 4:56. I pretended to fiddle with my oxygen tank to defuse the tension in the car. My mother and I, no matter how many times I try to avoid it, had our second fight today about my cancer. The first one went a little like this.

Mom: You don't have to do that, honey. I've got it.

Me: Mom, I just have cancer! I'm not some crippled little girl who can't do anything for herself.

Mom: Just cancer?! What do you think this is? A game? Because I can tell you, it is not fun to sit by and do nothing while you're only child dies from cancer!

Me: I-I'm sorry, Mom.

I felt terrible after snapping like that. I usually didn't but I was just a little pissed from a text that I got only seconds before. My ex-friend Jonathan had yelled at me because I couldn't go to the movies. Such a douche. The second fight was her fault, but I won't get into it. I just want to forget about it.

"Do you want me to carry it in for you?"

"No, it's fine," I said. The cylindrical green tank only weighed a few pounds, and I had this little steel cart to wheel it around behind me. It delivered two liters of oxygen to me each minute through a cannula, a transparent tube that split just beneath my neck, wrapped behind my ears, and then reunited in my nostrils. The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.

"I love you," she said as I got out.

"You too, Mom. See you at six."

"Make friends!" she said through the rolled-down window as I walked away.

"I have friends," I muttered under my breath as I walked towards the Insititute.

When I got inside and to the basement, I grabbed a cookie and poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup and then turned around.

A boy was staring at me. More specifically, _Jace Herondale_, was staring at me. He's never stared at me before. He's never really even made it a point to look. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Golden hair, messy and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirt advertising a band I didn't even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn't even bothered to, like, brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like a normally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the cankle situation. And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.

It occurred to me why they call it eye _contact_.

I walked into the circle and sat down between Izzy and Simon, two seats away from Jace. I glanced again. He was still watching me.

Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.

I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:59.

Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business, after all. Soon it was a staring contest. After a while Jace smiled, and then finally his golden eyes glanced away. When he looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, _I win_.

He shrugged. Magnus continued and then finally it was time for the introductions. "Simon, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time."

Simon sighed. "Yeah. I'm Simon. I'm seventeen and it's looking like I have to get surgery in a couple of weeks, after which I'll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though." Him and Izzy smiled at each other. "And friends like Clary and Jace." He nodded toward Jace. "So, yeah," Simon continued.

"We're here for you, Simon," Magnus said. "Let Simon hear it, guys." And then we all, in a monotone, said, "We're here for you, Simon." Then I tried to stifle a laugh because Izzy was making a face as she said it. My laugh escaped causing people to look down to me. I shrunk back in my seat, but Jace saved me by chuckling. Magnus rolled his eyes playfully at us. I sighed inwardly in relief. He didn't see that. But I spoke to soon. Magnus' eyes flickered between us before a smirk settled on his lips. I quietly cursed myself and Jace.

There were seven others before it came time for Jace to speak. He smiled a little. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. How come I never noticed this before? "My name is Jace Herondale," he announced, amused. "I'm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm just here today at Simon's request."

"And how are you feeling?"

"Oh, I'm grand. Although I see this as pointless. I practically live here." Jace gave him a lopsided grin. "And you too are here all of the time," he said under his breath, but I still heard him. I laughed outright and tried to cover it with a cough. "As are you, Clarissa, dear."

I shot him a look. I _hated _being called Clarissa.

Returning to Magnus, he said, "I'm on a rollar coaster that only goes up, my friend."

I sighed. It was my turn now. "My name is Clary. I'm sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I'm just peachy."

Everything was going just fine within the hour. Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered. Neither Jace nor I spoke again until Magnus said, "Jace, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?" He seemed intrigued.

"Yes."

"I fear oblivion," he said without a moment's pause. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

"Too soon," Simon said, cracking a smile.

"Was that insensitive?" Jace asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings."

Simon was laughing along with Izzy and I, but Magnus raised a chastening finger and said, "Jace, please. Let's return to _you_ and _your_ struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"

"I did," Jace answered.

Magnus seemed lost. He's never heard this from Jace before. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?" I hadn't been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I was a fairly shy person—not the hand-raising type.

And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Magnus, his delight evident, immediately said, "Clary!" I was, I'm sure he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group. Inward snicker.

I looked over at Jace, who looked back at me. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this"—I gestured encompassingly—"will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

I'd learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of _An Imperial Affliction_, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible. Peter Van Houten was the only person I'd ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it's like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence as I watched a smile spread all the way across Jace's face—not the little crooked smile of the boy trying to be sexy while he stared at me, but his real smile, too big for his face. "Goddamn," Jace said quietly. "Aren't you something else."

Neither of us said anything for the rest of Support Group. At the end, we all had to hold hands, and Magnus led us in a prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here in Your heart, _literally in Your heart_, as cancer survivors. You and You alone know us as we know ourselves. Guide us to life and the Light through our times of trial. We pray for Simon's eyes, for Jace's bones, for Clary's lungs, for Lexi's throat. We pray that You might heal us and that we might feel Your love, and Your peace, which passes all understanding. And we remember in our hearts those whom we knew and loved who have gone home to you: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haley and Abigail and Angelina and Taylor and Gabriel and . . ." It was a long list. The world contains a lot of dead people. And while Magnus droned on, reading the list from a sheet of paper because it was too long to memorize, I kept my eyes closed, trying to think prayerfully but mostly imagining the day when my name would find its way onto that list, all the way at the end when everyone had stopped listening.

When Magnus was finished, we said this stupid mantra together—LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY—and it was over. Jace pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to me. His gait was crooked like his smile. He towered over me, but he kept his distance so I wouldn't have to crane my neck to look him in the eye.

"Clarissa Fray," he murmured in amusement. "How are you?"

"Just peachy," I replied dryly.

"The truth," he said.

I rolled my eyes. "It just sucks, you know?"

He nodded his head. "I do know."

That was when Simon walked over with Izzy. Both of them had smiles on their faces. I was happy for them. Izzy wasn't one to care if Simon looked like a big nerdy geek or if he _was _going to go blind. Izzy has the same cancer as Jace and I am happy to say that it is almost gone. Although us cancer patients know that cancer can resurface at any possible moment.

"Counterinsurgence tomorrow?" Jace asked.

"Definitely." Simon turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Izzy laughed before turning to me.

"Are we going to hang out later? Oh and Magnus is eating over and my parents wanted to know if you and Jace would join us."

I shrugged. "I'll have to call my mom. Although we just had a fight so I don't know how she'll act."

Izzy nodded knowingly. "Alright. Jace?"

He shrugged too. "I've got nothing better to do. My grandmother doesn't get home until ten."

A smile spread across her face. "See you upstairs then. I have to say goodbye to Simon."

"Tell him I said goodbye."

She nodded and headed up the stairs, two at a time like Simon. I shot a grin in Jace's direction.

"Literally," he said.

"Literally?" I asked.

"We are literally in the heart of Jesus," he said. "I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus."

"Someone should tell Jesus," I said. "I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart."

"I would tell Him myself," Jace said, "but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won't be able to hear me." I laughed. He shook his head, just looking at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Jace half smiled. "Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence." A brief awkward silence ensued. JAce plowed through: "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."

I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, "I'm not beau—"

"You're like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like _V for Vendetta_ Natalie Portman."

"Never seen it," I said.

"Really?" he asked. "Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can't help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It's your autobio-graphy, so far as I can tell."

His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys _could_ turn me on—not, like, in real life.

A younger girl walked past us. "How's it going, Alisa?" he asked. She smiled and mumbled, "Hi, Jace."

"Memorial people," he explained. Memorial was the big research hospital. "Where do you go?"

"Children's," I said, my voice smaller than I expected it to be. He nodded. The conversation seemed over. "Well," I said, nodding vaguely toward the steps that led us out of the Literal Heart of Jesus. I tilted my cart onto its wheels and started walking. He limped beside me. "So, see you upstairs?" I asked.

"You should see it," he said. "_V for Vendetta_, I mean."

"Okay," I said. "I'll look it up."

"No. With me. At my house," he said. "After dinner." I stopped walking. "I hardly know you, Jace Herondale. You could be an ax murderer."

He laughed at me. "I am best friend's with Alec Lightwood how could I possibly be an ax murderer?"

My brows furrowed. "Point taken."

I followed him upstairs, losing ground as I made my way up slowly, stairs not being a field of expertise for my lungs.

Since my mom wasn't here yet, which I was grateful for, I called her. She answered on the first ring. "Is everything okay? Did something happen?"

"I'm fine, mom. I just wanted to tell you that you won't have to pick me up. I'll be out late."

You could practically hear the smile in her voice. "Really? Who are you hanging out with?"

"The Lightwood's invited me to dinner then I'm going back to Jace's house."

"Herondale?"

"Yeah. Is that a problem?" Oh no. Please don't start a fight about this.

"No, it's not. Am I picking you up there?"

I nodded, but then remembered she couldn't see me. "Yeah," I said softly. "If you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind, honey. How does nine thirty sound?"

"Perfect."

"I love you."

"You too, Mom," I said before hanging up the phone.

Then I headed back into the Lightwood's. I glanced around and saw that Simon had Izzy pinned against the stone wall of the Institute, kissing her rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, "Always," and her saying, "Always," in return.

Suddenly standing next to me, Jace half whispered, "That's just gross."

"What if Max came by?" The slurping sounds intensified.

His hand reached for her boob over her shirt and pawed at it, his palm still while his fingers moved around. I wondered if that felt good.

Didn't seem like it would, but I decided to forgive Simon on the grounds that he was going blind. The senses must feast while there is yet hunger and whatever.

"Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital," I said quietly. "The last time you'll ever drive a car."

Without looking over at me, Jace said, "You're killing my vibe here, Clarissa. I'm trying to observe young love in its many-splendored awkwardness."

"I think he's hurting her boob," I said.

"Yes, it's difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam." Then Jace reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips.

"Are you _serious_?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined _the whole thing_."

"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.

"The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a _hamartia_ and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. _Totally_."

"A _hamartia_?" he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.

"A fatal flaw," I explained, turning away from him. I started my way over to the couple. They had to stop before poor little Max saw them. "Iz," I grumbled when I got to them. "Si."

They pulled apart giving me an annoyed grunt. "Hm?"

I decided to play innocent. "Poor little Maxy Waxy could just so happen to pop by and see two of his favorite people going at it."

Izzy giggled and rolled her eyes. "We were just _kissing_. It's not like we were having sex."

"What's sex?" A small voice asked from behind me.

I spun around to find Max standing there. Jace was walking our way, chuckling. "It's when two people are hugging."

Max turned to me. "Can we have sex, Clary?"

All of us burst out laughing. "Now, now, Max," Jace started. "We don't go around asking people for sex. Because if that were the case I'd be the luckiest man out there." He winked at me.

I was sure my face turned bright red. "Alright, alright. Let's go eat." With that, we all headed to the kitchen.

We were almost there when I felt a hand grab mine. I yanked my hand free but turned back to him.

"They don't kill you unless you light them," he said. "And I've never lit one. It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."

"It's a metaphor," I said, dubious.

"It's a metaphor," he said.

"You choose your behaviors based on their metaphorical resonances . . ." I said.

"Oh, yes." He smiled. The big, goofy, real smile. "I'm a big believer in metaphor, Clarissa."

After dinner, Jace and I said our goodbyes before getting in the car and heading to his house. Jace drove horrifically. Whether stopping or starting, everything happened with a tremendous JOLT. I flew against the seat belt of his Toyota SUV each time he braked, and my neck snapped backward each time he hit the gas. I might have been nervous—what with sitting in the car of a strange boy on the way to his house, keenly aware that my crap lungs complicate efforts to fend off unwanted advances—but his driving was so astonishingly poor that I could think of nothing else.

We'd gone perhaps a mile in jagged silence before Jace said, "I failed the driving test three times."

"You don't say."

He laughed, nodding. "Well, I can't feel pressure in old Prosty, and I can't get the hang of driving left-footed. My doctors say most amputees can drive with no problem, but . . . yeah. Not me. Anyway, I go in for my fourth driving test, and it goes about like this is going." A half mile in front of us, a light turned red. Jace slammed on the brakes, tossing me into the triangular embrace of the seat belt. "Sorry. I swear to God I am trying to be gentle. Right, so anyway, at the end of the test, I totally thought I'd failed again, but the instructor was like, 'Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn't technically unsafe.'"

"I'm not sure I agree," I said. "I suspect Cancer Perk." Cancer Perks are the little things cancer kids get that regular kids don't: basketballs signed by sports heroes, free passes on late homework, unearned driver's licenses, etc.

"Yeah," he said. The light turned green. I braced myself. Jace slammed the gas.

"You know they've got hand controls for people who can't use their legs," I pointed out.

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe someday." He sighed in a way that made me wonder whether he was confident about the existence of _someday_. I knew osteosarcoma was highly curable, but still.

There are a number of ways to establish someone's approximate survival expectations without actually _asking_. I used the classic: "So, are you in school?" Generally, your parents pull you out of school at some point if they expect you to bite it.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm at North Central. A year behind, though: I'm a sophomore. You?"

I considered lying. No one likes a corpse, after all. But in the end I told the truth. "No, my parents withdrew me three years ago."

"Three _years_?" he asked, astonished.

I told Jace the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.) It was, we were told, incurable.

I had a surgery called _radical neck dissection_, which is about as pleasant as it sounds. Then radiation. Then they tried some chemo for my lung tumors. The tumors shrank, then grew. By then, I was fourteen.

My lungs started to fill up with water. I was looking pretty dead—my hands and feet ballooned; my skin cracked; my lips were perpetually blue. They've got this drug that makes you not feel so completely terrified about the fact that you can't breathe, and I had a lot of it flowing into me through a PICC line, and more than a dozen other drugs besides. But even so, there's a certain unpleasantness to drowning, particularly when it occurs over the course of several months. I finally ended up in the ICU with pneumonia, and my mom knelt by the side of my bed and said, "Are you ready, sweetie?" and I told her I was ready, and my dad just kept telling me he loved me in this voice that was not breaking so much as already broken, and I kept telling him that I loved him, too, and everyone was holding hands, and I couldn't catch my breath, and my lungs were acting desperate, gasping, pulling me out of the bed trying to find a position that could get them air, and I was embarrassed by their desperation, disgusted that they wouldn't just _let go_, and I remember my mom telling me it was okay, that I was okay, that I would be okay, and my father was trying so hard not to sob that when he did, which was regularly, it was an earthquake. And I remember wanting not to be awake.

Everyone figured I was finished, but my Cancer Doctor Imogen managed to get some of the fluid out of my lungs, and shortly thereafter the antibiotics they'd given me for the pneumonia kicked in. I woke up and soon got one of those experimental trials that are famous in the Republic of Cancervania for Not Working. What they used was a molecule designed to attach itself to cancer cells and slow their growth that was called Phalanxifor. On about 70 percent of people it didn't work, but I was one of those 30 percent that it did. The tumors actually shrank. In the past eighteen months, my mets have hardly grown, leaving me with lungs that sucked ass at being lungs, but could, coneivably, struggle along indefinitely with the assistance of drizzled oxygen and Phalanxifor. Admittedly, my Cancer Miracle had only resulted in a bit of purchased time. (I did not yet know the size of the bit.) But when telling Jace, I painted the rosiest possible picture, embellishing the miraculousness of the miracle.

"So now you gotta go back to school," he said.

"I actually _can't_," I explained, "because I already got my GED. So I'm taking classes at MCC," which was our community college.

"A college girl," he said, nodding. "That explains the aura of sophistication." He smirked at me. I shoved his upper arm playfully. I could feel the muscle right beneath the skin, all tense and amazing.

We made a wheels-screeching turn into a subdivision with eight-foot-high stucco walls. His house was the first one on the left. A two-story colonial. We jerked to a halt in his driveway.

I followed him inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway was engraved in cursive with the words _Home Is Where the Heart Is_, and the entire house turned out to be festooned in such observations. _Good Friends_ _Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget_ read an illustration above the coatrack. _True Love Is Born from Hard Times_ promised a needle-pointed pillow in their antique-furnished living room. Jace saw me reading. "My parents used to call them Encouragements," he explained with a sad tone to his voice.

"They're everywhere."

"Yeah," he murmured. "You want popcorn?"

"I guess?" I said. "Do you want some? Because if you don't then I won't have to have any."

"It's no problem, sophisticated Clarissa.

I laughed. "Sophisticated Clarissa?"

He nodded firmly. "You are sophisticated and your name is Clarissa."

"But I don't like being called Clarissa."

"You're right," he agreed. "Too harsh on the tongue and it is far too long." He thought for a moment before speaking. "How about Clare? It's not what you're usually called and it's not your real name."

"Clare," I said, trying it out. "I like it." I smiled at him.

He gave me a real, genuine smile. "Let us watch _V for Vendetta_ now." Jace led me to his living room. I took a seat and waited for him to return from making the popcorn. "Now it is time for you to see you filmic doppelgänger, mid-two thousands Natalie Portman." He walked towards the TV, where a huge pile of DVDs and video games were arranged into a vague pyramid shape. He bent at the waist and snatched up V for Vendetta. I looked around as he put the DVD in. There was a huge pile of books that were too far away for me to see the names of.

"You read?" I asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"Most definitely."

"What do you read?"

"Everything. From, like, hideous romance to pretentious fiction to poetry. Whatever."

"Do you write poetry, too?"

"No. I don't write."

"There!" Jace almost shouted. "Clare, you are the only teenager in America who prefers reading poetry to writing it. This tells me so much. You read a lot of capital-G great books, don't you?"

"I guess?"

"What's your favorite?"

"Um," I said.

My favorite book, by a wide margin, was _An Imperial Affliction_, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like _An_ _Imperial Affliction_, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and _yours_ that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal. It wasn't even that the book was so good or anything; it was just that the author, Peter Van Houten, seemed to understand me in weird and impossible ways. _An Imperial Affliction_ was _my_ book, in the way my body was my body and my thoughts were my thoughts.

Even so, I told Jace. "My favorite book is probably _An Imperial_ _Affliction_," I said.

"Does it feature zombies?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Stormtroopers?"

I shook my head. "It's not that kind of book." He smiled. "I am going to read this terrible book with the boring title that does not contain stormtroopers," he promised, and I immediately felt like I shouldn't have told him about it. Jace spun around to the pile of books. He grabbed a paperback and a pen. As he scribbled an inscription onto the title page, he said, "All I ask in exchange is that you read this brilliant and haunting novelization of my favorite video game." He held up the book, which was called _The Price of Dawn_. I laughed and took it. Our hands kind of got muddled together in the book handoff, and then he was holding my hand. "Cold," he said, pressing a finger to my pale wrist.

"Not cold so much as underoxygenated," I said.

"I love it when you talk medical to me," he said as he took a seat next to me.

We watched the movie with several inches of couch between us. I did the totally middle-schooly thing where I put my hand on the couch about halfway between us to let him know that it was okay to hold it, but he didn't try. The movie was about this heroic guy in a mask who died heroically for Natalie Portman, who's pretty badass and very hot and does not have anything approaching my puffy steroid face.

As the credits rolled, he said, "Pretty great, huh?"

"Pretty great," I agreed, although it wasn't, really. It was kind of a boy movie. I don't know why boys expect us to like boy movies. We don't expect them to like girl movies. "I should get home. Class in the morning," I said.

I sat on the couch for a while as Jace searched for his keys. The I realised that he didn't have to do that. "My mom is going to come and pick me up. You don't have to take me home." With that, I pulled out my phone and texted my mom that I was ready for her.

Jace sat with me out on the porch as we waited for my mom. The air had thickened. He was probably thinking about kissing me, and I was definitely thinking about kissing him. Wondering if I wanted to. I'd kissed boys but it had been a while. Pre-Miracle. Jace and I turned to look at each other. Our heads started moving closer. Our lips were inches apart when my mom pulled up and honked the horn. Jace cursed before helping me walk to the car by carrying my oxygen tank.

"Thank you," I said softly as he helped me climb into the car.

He gave me a small smile. "It was my pleasure. May I see you again?"

"You may," I answered with a smiled.

"Tomorrow?" He asked.

"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager."

"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait _all night and much of tomorrow_." I rolled my eyes. "I'm _serious_," he whispered to me before slipping a paper into my hand, closing my door and walking off.

"I am so sorry!" My mom squealed. "I didn't know he was going to kiss you. If I would have known I wouldn't have honked."

"You sound like a creeper," I chuckled.

My mom chuckled too.

I stayed up pretty late that night reading _The Price of Dawn_. (Spoiler alert: The price of dawn is blood.) It wasn't _An Imperial Affliction_, but the protagonist, Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, was vaguely likable despite killing, by my count, no fewer than 118 individuals in 284 pages.

So I got up late the next morning, a Thursday. Mom's policy was never to wake me up, because one of the job requirements of Professional Sick Person is sleeping a lot, so I was kind of confused at first when I jolted awake with her hands on my shoulders.

"It's almost ten," she said.

"Sleep fights cancer," I said. "I was up late reading."

"It must be some book," she said as she knelt down next to the bed and unscrewed me from my large, rectangular oxygen concentrator, which I called Philip, because it just kind of looked like a Philip.

Mom hooked me up to a portable tank and then reminded me I had class. "Did that boy give it to you?" she asked out of nowhere.

"By _it_, do you mean herpes?"

"You are too much," Mom said. "The book, Clary. I mean the book."

"Yeah, he gave me the book."

"I can tell you like him," she said, eyebrows raised, as if this observation required some uniquely maternal instinct. I shrugged. "I told you Support Group would be worth your while. Anyway, time to face the day, young lady."

"Mom. Sleep. Cancer. Fighting."

"I know, love, but there is class to attend. Also, today is . . . " The glee in Mom's voice was evident.

"Thursday?"

"Did you seriously forget?"

"Maybe?"

"It's Thursday, March twenty-ninth!" she basically screamed, a demented smile plastered to her face.

"You are really excited about knowing the date!" I yelled back.

"CLARY! IT'S YOUR THIRTY-THIRD HALF BIRTHDAY!"

"Ohhhhhh," I said. My mom was really super into celebration maximization. IT'S ARBOR DAY! LET'S HUG TREES AND EAT CAKE! COLUMBUS BROUGHT SMALLPOX TO THE NATIVES; WE SHALL RECALL THE OCCASION WITH A PICNIC!, etc. "Well, Happy thirty-third Half Birthday to me," I said.

"What do you want to do on your very special day?"

"Come home from class and set the world record for number of episodes of _Top Chef_ watched consecutively?"

Mom reached up to this shelf above my bed and grabbed Bluie, the blue stuffed bear I'd had since I was, like, one—back when it was socially acceptable to name one's friends after their hue.

"You don't want to go to a movie with Isabelle or Alec or someone? You don't want to hang out with Simon?"

That was an idea. "Sure," I said. "I'll text Isabelle and see if she wants to go to the mall or something after school." Mom smiled, hugging the bear to her stomach. "Is it still cool to go to the mall?" she asked.

"I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool," I answered.

I texted Isabelle, took a shower, got dressed, and then Mom drove me to school. My class was American Literature, a lecture about Frederick Douglass in a mostly empty auditorium, and it was incredibly difficult to stay awake. Forty minutes into the ninety-minute class, Isabelle texted back.

_Awesomesauce. Happy Half Birthday. Castleton at 3:32?_

Isabelle had the kind of packed social life that needs to be scheduled down to the minute. I responded: _Sounds good. I'll be at the food court._

Mom drove me directly from school to the bookstore attached to the mall, where I purchased both _Midnight Dawns_ and _Requiem for Mayhem_, the first two sequels to _The Price of Dawn_, and then I walked over to the huge food court and bought a Diet Coke. It was 3:21.

I watched these kids playing in the pirate-ship indoor playground while I read. There was this tunnel that these two kids kept crawling through over and over and they never seemed to get tired.

Mom was also in the food court, alone, sitting in a corner where she thought I couldn't see her, eating a cheesesteak sandwich and reading through some papers. Medical stuff, probably. The paperwork was endless.

At 3:32 precisely, I noticed Izzy striding confidently past the Wok House. She saw me the moment I raised my hand, flashed her very white and newly straightened teeth at me, and headed over.

She wore a knee-length charcoal coat that fit perfectly and sunglasses that dominated her face. She pushed them up onto the top of her head as she leaned down to hug me.

"Clary!" She smiled. "How are you on this very fine day?"

"Amazing."

"Is that diet?" I nodded and handed it to her. She sipped through the straw. "What shall we go see today?"

"How about that new one? The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones?"

Izzy nodded enthusiastically. "That looks amazing." She held out her arm. "Shall we?"

Laughing, I spilled my arm through hers. "We shall."

The movie lasted two hours and it was amazing! It was the best movie I have ever seen byfar. Although it was kind of creepy that the characters had the same names as me and my friends.

"So do you want to go shopping?"

"I should head home actually," I said. "I'm kinda tired."

"Sure, of course," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

Nodding, I answered. "Of course. Aren't we taking Max out for comic books?"

"Yes, we are."

My mom was waiting in the parking lot reading something. I just climbed in nonchalantly and waited for her to start driving. I only had twenty pages left of _Midnight Dawns_ by the time we got home. Twenty pages from the end of _Midnight Dawns_, things started to look pretty bleak for Mayhem when he was shot seventeen times while attempting to rescue a (blond, American) hostage from the Enemy. But as a reader, I did not despair. The war effort would go on without him.

There could—and would—be sequels starring his cohorts: Specialist Manny Loco and Private Jasper Jacks and the rest.

I went to bed a little early that night, changing into boy boxers and a T-shirt before crawling under the covers of my bed, which was queen size and pillow topped and one of my favorite places in the world. And then I started reading _An Imperial Affliction_ for the millionth time.

_AIA_ is about this girl named Anna (who narrates the story) and her one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips, and they have a normal lower-middle- class life in a little central California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer.

But it's not a _cancer book_, because cancer books suck. Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy.

But in _AIA_, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.

Also, Anna is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: Throughout the book, she refers to herself as _the side effect_, which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. So as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treatments and disease racing to kill her, and her mom falls in love with this Dutch tulip trader Anna calls the Dutch Tulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has lots of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but Anna thinks this guy might be a con man and possibly not even Dutch, and then just as the possibly Dutch guy and her mom are about to get married and Anna is about to start this crazy new treatment regimen involving wheatgrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of a sentence. I know it's a very _literary_ decision and everything and probably part of the reason I love the book so much, but there is something to recommend a story that _ends_. And if it can't end, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like the adventures of Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem's platoon.

I understood the story ended because Anna died or got too sick to write and this midsentence thing was supposed to reflect how life really ends and whatever, but there were characters other than Anna in the story, and it seemed unfair that I would never find out what happened to them. I'd written, care of his publisher, a dozen letters to Peter Van Houten, each asking for some answers about what happens after the end of the story: whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man, whether Anna's mother ends up married to him, what happens to Anna's stupid hamster (which her mom hates), whether Anna's friends graduate from high school—all that stuff. But he'd never responded to any of my letters.

_AIA_ was the only book Peter Van Houten had written, and all anyone seemed to know about him was that after the book came out he moved from the United States to the Netherlands and became kind of reclusive. I imagined that he was working on a sequel set in the Netherlands—maybe Anna's mom and the Dutch Tulip Man end up moving there and trying to start a new life. But it had been ten years since _An_ _Imperial Affliction_ came out, and Van Houten hadn't published so much as a blog post. I couldn't wait forever.

As I reread that night, I kept getting distracted imagining Jace reading the same words. I wondered if he'd like it, or if he'd dismiss it as pretentious. Then I remembered my promise to call him after reading _The Price of Dawn_, so I found his number on its title page and texted him.

_Price of Dawn review: Too many bodies. Not enough adjectives. __How's AIA?_

He replied a minute later: _As I recall, you promised to CALL when you finished the book, not_ _text._

So I called.

"Clare," he said upon picking up.

"So have you read it?"

"Well, I haven't finished it. It's six hundred fifty-one pages long and I've had twenty-four hours."

"How far are you?"

"Four fifty-three."

"And?"

"I will withhold judgment until I finish. However, I will say that I'm feeling a bit embarrassed to have given you _The Price of Dawn_."

"Don't be. I'm already on _Requiem for Mayhem_."

"A sparkling addition to the series. So, okay, is the tulip guy a crook? I'm getting a bad vibe from him."

"No spoilers," I said.

"If he is anything other than a total gentleman, I'm going to gouge his eyes out."

"So you're into it."

"Withholding judgment! When can I see you?"

"Certainly not until you finish _An Imperial Affliction_." I enjoyed being coy.

"Then I'd better hang up and start reading."

"You'd better," I said, and the line clicked dead without another word.

Flirting was new to me, but I liked it. I was asleep for a few hours when I got a call from Maryse, Izzy's mom.

"Clary," she cried. "Isabelle was just taken to the emergency room."

"What happened?" I urged.

"The cancer. It spread. Izzy has to get half of her arm amputated."

I gasped. "No," I whispered.

"Would you mind coming to the hospital? She asked me right before they brought her in to call you."

"I'll be over soon." I hung up the phone. "Mom!" I yelled hoping that she'd hear me.

My mom and dad ran in frantically. "What is it? Are you okay?"

"No," I said, my voice wavering. "Izzy was taken into the ER."

Both my parents set into action. My mom was unhooking me from the machine while my dad was packing some supplies for me. After grabbing a cereal bar, we drove quickly to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, I ran as fast as I could into the ER. Maryse, Max, Robert, Alec, Simon, and Jace were sitting there. It was 4:30 in the morning and I was panting like a bitch.

"Any word on how she is?"

Maryse shook her head sadly. "Not yet." She led me to a chair. " And you should sit down. We don't need two children in the hospital tonight."

After about a minute, I could feel the fluid start to fill my lungs. My breathing ceased every so often. My eyes flickered to my mom who was watching me with fear prominent in her eyes. I could feel my body start to sway from dizziness. Then I couldn't breathe. My heart started thumping. _Thumpthumpthump thumpthumpthump thumpthumpthump. _"Mom," I croaked.

I heard voices shouting around me, but everything was fuzzy. Then I fell into a dark aybss. When I awoke, Izzy was sitting next to me in a chair. Her arm, up to her elbow, was gone. When she saw that I was awake, she smiled warmly at me.

"I thought my mom said that we didn't need two children in the hospital."

I shrugged. "What can I say? I couldn't let you have all the attention."

The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC, but I wasn't allowed to go to that because I was still in the hospital. The next day is when I was actually released. When I checked my phone I noticed that I had four messages from Jace.

**Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something. **

**Clare, tell me I have not reached the end of this book. **

**OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS **

**I guess Anna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. **

**I hope you're alright. I was told that only family could stay. They let Izzy stay because you two shared a room for that night. Please call me when you get this. I need to hear it from you. Not a text. **

So when I got home I went out into the backyard and sat down on this rusting latticed patio chair and called him. It was a cloudy day, typical Indiana: the kind of weather that boxes you in. Our little backyard was dominated by my childhood swing set, which was looking pretty waterlogged and pathetic.

Augustus picked up on the third ring. "Clare," he said with a sigh of relief.

"So welcome to the sweet torture of reading _An Imperial_—" I stopped when I heard violent sobbing on the other end of the line. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm grand," Jace answered. "I am, however, with Simon, who seems to be decompensating." More wailing. Like the death cries of some injured animal. Jace turned his attention to Simon. "Dude. Dude. Does Clare this better or worse? Simon. Focus. On. Me." After a minute, Jace said to me, "Can you meet us at my house in, say, twenty minutes?"

"Sure," I said, and hung up.

If you could drive in a straight line, it would only take like five minutes to get from my house to Jace's house, but you can't drive in a straight line because Holliday Park is between us.

Even though it was a geographic inconvenience, I really liked Holliday Park. When I was a little kid, I would wade in the White River with my dad and there was always this great moment when he would throw me up in the air, just toss me away from him, and I would reach out my arms as I flew and he would reach out his arms, and then we would both see that our arms were not going to touch and no one was going to catch me, and it would kind of scare the shit out of both of us in the best possible way, and then I would legs-flailingly hit the water and then come up for air uninjured and the current would bring me back to him as I said _again, Daddy, again_.

I pulled into the driveway right next to an old black Toyota sedan I figured was Simon's car. Carting the tank behind me, I walked up to the door. I knocked.

"Clare," Jace greeted. "Simon? Clare is here."

"Clary?!" Simon came bounding into the room. He gave me a bone crushing hug. "You're okay! They wouldn't let me see you or Izzy. I thought you were dead!"

I squirmed out of his embrace. Too tight. "Of course I'm not dead. You can't get rid of me that easily." He chuckled.

"You look nice," Jace said. I was wearing this just-past-the-knees dress I'd had forever. "Girls think they're only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, _I'm going over to see_ _a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection_ _to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to_ _wear a dress for him_. Pain demands to be felt," he said, which was a line from _An Imperial Affliction_. "You're sure there's no one behind us?" he asked Simon. They had resumed playing their game. Moments later, tracer bullets started whizzing over their heads. "Oh, goddamn it, Simon," Jace said. "I don't mean to criticize you in your moment of great weakness, but you've allowed us to be outflanked, and now there's nothing between the terrorists and the school." Simon's character took off running toward the fire, zigging and zagging down a narrow alleyway.

"You could go over the bridge and circle back," I said, a tactic I knew about thanks to _The Price of Dawn_.

Jace sighed. "Sadly, the bridge is already under insurgent control due to questionable strategizing by my bereft cohort."

"Me?" Simon said, his voice breathy. "Me?! You're the one who suggested we hole up in the freaking power station." Jace turned away from the screen for a second and flashed his crooked smile at Simon. "See? You're fine, buddy," he said. "Now let's go save some fictional schoolchildren."

Together, they ran down the alleyway, firing and hiding at the right moments, until they reached this one-story, single-room schoolhouse.

They crouched behind a wall across the street and picked off the enemy one by one.

"Why do they want to get into the school?" I asked.

"They want the kids as hostages," he answered. His shoulders rounded over his controller, slamming buttons, his forearms taut, veins visible. Simon leaned toward the screen, the controller dancing in his thin-fingered hands. "Get it get it get it," Jace said. The waves of terrorists continued, and they mowed down every one, their shooting astonishingly precise, as it had to be, lest they fire into the school.

"Grenade! Grenade!" Jace shouted as something arced across the screen, bounced in the doorway of the school, and then rolled against the door.

Simon dropped his controller in disappointment. "If the bastards can't take hostages, they just kill them and claim we did it."

"Cover me!" Jace said as he jumped out from behind the wall and raced toward the school. Simon fumbled for his controller and then started firing while the bullets rained down on Jace, who was shot once and then twice but still ran, Augustus shouting, _"YOU CAN'T __KILL MAX MAYHEM!"_ and with a final flurry of button combinations, he dove onto the grenade, which detonated beneath him. His dismembered body exploded like a geyser and the screen went red. A throaty voice said, "MISSION FAILURE," but Jace seemed to think otherwise as he smiled at his remnants on the screen. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and shoved it between his teeth. "Saved the kids," he said.

"Temporarily," I pointed out.

"All salvation is temporary," Jace shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Clare, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing."

"Whoa, okay," I said. "We're just talking about pixels." He shrugged, as if he believed the game might be really real. He turned to Simon. "Another go at the mission, corporal?"

Simon shook his head no. He leaned over Jace to look at me. "Are you going with Izzy today?"

I smacked my forehead. "I totally forgot! Izzy is going to have to pick me up."

"Where are you going?" Jace asked.

"We're taking Max to the comic book store."

"Why don't we all join you?"

I shrugged. "Sure why not? Just let me call Izzy."

After a long conversation with Izzy that consisted of shedded tears, yelling, and whispers, I finally got my okay. Jace and Simon joined Izzy, Max, and I on our journey to the comic book store.

For the next week, I went about my life: I ingested my recommended daily allowance of Phalanxifor; I attended classes three mornings that week at MCC; and every night, I sat down to dinner with my mom and dad.

Sunday night, we had pizza with green peppers and broccoli. We were seated around our little circular table in the kitchen when my phone started singing, but I wasn't allowed to check it because we have a strict no-phones-during-dinner rule.

So I ate a little while Mom and Dad talked about this earthquake that had just happened in Papua New Guinea. They met in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, and so whenever anything happened there, even something terrible, it was like all of a sudden they were not large sedentary creatures, but the young and idealistic and self-sufficient and rugged people they had once been, and their rapture was such that they didn't even glance over at me as I ate faster than I'd ever eaten, transmitting items from my plate into my mouth with a speed and ferocity that left me quite out of breath, which of course made me worry that my lungs were again swimming in a rising pool of fluid. I banished the thought as best I could. I had another PET scan scheduled in a couple weeks. If something was wrong, I'd find out soon enough.

Nothing to be gained by worrying between now and then.

And yet still I worried. I liked being a person. I wanted to keep at it.

Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

Finally I finished and said, "Can I be excused?" and they hardly even paused from their conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of Guinean infrastructure. I grabbed my phone from my purse on the kitchen counter and checked my recent calls. _Jace Herondale._

I went out the back door into the twilight. I could see the swing set, and I thought about walking out there and swinging while I talked to him, but it seemed pretty far away given that _eating_ tired me.

Instead, I lay down in the grass on the patio's edge, looked up at Orion, the only constellation I could recognize, and called him.

"Clare," he said.

"Hi," I said. "How are you?"

"Grand," he said. "I have been wanting to call you on a nearly minutely basis, but I have been waiting until I could form a coherent thought in re _An Imperial Affliction_." (He said "in re." He really did. That boy.)

"And?" I said.

"I think it's, like. Reading it, I just kept feeling like, like."

"Like?" I asked, teasing him.

"Like it was a gift?" he said askingly. "Like you'd given me something important."

"Oh," I said quietly.

"That's cheesy," he said. "I'm sorry."

"No," I said. "No. Don't apologize."

"But it doesn't end."

"Yeah," I said.

"Torture. I totally _get it_, like, I get that she died or whatever."

"Right, I assume so," I said.

"And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract."

"I don't know," I said, feeling defensive of Peter Van Houten. "That's part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence. But I do—God, I do really want to know what happens to everyone else. That's what I asked him in my letters. But he, yeah, he never answers."

"Right. You said he is a recluse?"

"Correct."

"Impossible to track down."

"Correct."

"Utterly unreachable," Jace said.

"Unfortunately so," I said.

"'Dear Mr. Herondale,'" he answered. "'I am writing to thank you for your electronic correspondence, received via Ms. Vliegenthart this sixth of April, from the United States of America, insofar as geography can be said to exist in our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity.'"

"Jace, what the hell?"

"He has an assistant," Jace said. "Lidewij Vliegenthart. I found her. I emailed her. She gave him the email. He responded via her email account."

"Okay, okay. Keep reading."

"'My response is being written with ink and paper in the glorious tradition of our ancestors and then transcribed by Ms. Vliegenthart into a series of 1s and 0s to travel through the insipid web which has lately ensnared our species, so I apologize for any errors or omissions that may result.

"'Given the entertainment bacchanalia at the disposal of young men and women of your generation, I am grateful to anyone anywhere who sets aside the hours necessary to read my little book. But I am particularly indebted to you, sir, both for your kind words about _An Imperial_ _Affliction_ and for taking the time to tell me that the book, and here I quote you directly, "meant a great deal" to you.

"'This comment, however, leads me to wonder: What do you mean by _meant_? Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Jace? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteen-year-olds you no doubt revile— _there is a point to it all_.

"'I fear there is not, my friend, and that you would receive scant encouragement from further encounters with my writing. But to answer your question: No, I have not written anything else, nor will I. I do not feel that continuing to share my thoughts with readers would benefit either them or me. Thank you again for your generous email.

"'Yours most sincerely, Peter Van Houten, via Lidewij Vliegenthart.'"

"Wow," I said. "Are you making this up?"

"Clare, could I, with my meager intellectual capacities, make up a letter from Peter Van Houten featuring phrases like 'our triumphantly digitized contemporaneity'?"

"You could not," I allowed. "Can I, can I have the email address?"

"Of course," Jace said, like it was not the best gift ever.

I spent the next two hours writing an email to Peter Van Houten. It seemed to get worse each time I rewrote it, but I couldn't stop myself.

Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten

(c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart),

My name is Clarissa Adele Fray. My friend Jace Herondale, who read _An Imperial Affliction_ at my recommendation, just received an email from you at this address. I hope you will not mind that Jace shared that email with me. Mr. Van Houten, I understand from your email to Jace that you are not planning to publish any more books. In a way, I am disappointed, but I'm also relieved: I never have to worry whether your next book will live up to the magnificent perfection of the original. As a three-year survivor of Stage IV cancer, I can tell you that you got everything right in _An Imperial Affliction_. Or at least you got _me_ right. Your book has a way of telling me what I'm feeling before I even feel it, and I've reread it dozens of times.

I wonder, though, if you would mind answering a couple questions I have about what happens after the end of the novel. I understand the book ends because Anna dies or becomes too ill to continue writing it, but I would really like to know what happens to Anna's mom—whether she married the Dutch Tulip Man, whether she ever has another child, and whether she stays at 917 W. Temple, etc. Also, is the Dutch Tulip Man a fraud or does he really love them? What happens to Anna's friends—particularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay together? And lastly—I realize that this is the kind of deep and thoughtful question you always hoped your readers would ask—what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster? These questions have haunted me for years—and I don't know how long I have left to get answers to them.

I know these are not important literary questions and that your book is full of important literary questions, but I would just really like to know.

And of course, if you ever do decide to write anything else, even if you don't want to publish it, I'd love to read it. Frankly, I'd read your grocery lists.

Yours with great admiration,

Clarissa Adele Fray

(age 16)

After I sent it, I called Jace back, and we stayed up late talking about _An Imperial Affliction_, and I read him the Emily Dickinson poem that Van Houten had used for the title, and he said I had a good voice for reading and didn't pause too long for the line breaks, and then he told me that the sixth _Price of Dawn_ book, _The Blood Approves_, begins with a quote from a poem. It took him a minute to find the book, but finally he read the quote to me. "'Say your life broke down. The last good kiss / You had was years ago.'"

"Not bad," I said. "Bit pretentious. I believe Max Mayhem would refer to that as 'sissy shit.'"

"Yes, with his teeth gritted, no doubt. God, Mayhem grits his teeth a lot in these books. He's definitely going to get TMJ, if he survives all this combat." And then after a second, Jace asked, "When was the last good kiss you had?"

I thought about it. My kissing—all prediagnosis—had been uncomfortable and slobbery, and on some level it always felt like kids playing at being grown. But of course it had been a while. "Years ago," I said finally. "You?"

"I had a few good kisses with my ex-girlfriend, Aline Penhallow."

"Years ago?"

"The last one was just less than a year ago."

"What happened?"

"During the kiss?"

"No, with you and Aline."

"Oh," he said. And then after a second, "Aline is no longer suffering from personhood."

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. I'd known plenty of dead people, of course. But I'd never dated one. I couldn't even imagine it, really.

"Not your fault, Clare. We're all just side effects, right?"

"'Barnacles on the container ship of consciousness,'" I said, quoting _AIA_.

"Okay," he said. "I gotta go to sleep. It's almost one."

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said.

I giggled and said, "Okay." And then the line was quiet but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.

"Okay," he said after forever. "Maybe _okay_ will be our _always_."

"Okay," I said.

It was Jace who finally hung up.

Peter Van Houten replied to Jace's email four hours after he sent it, but two days later, Van Houten still hadn't replied to me. Jace assured me it was because my email was better and required a more thoughtful response, that Van Houten was busy writing answers to my questions, and that brilliant prose took time. But still I worried.

On Wednesday during American Poetry for Dummies 101, I got a text from Jace:

**Simon out of surgery. It went well. He's officially NEC.**

NEC meant "no evidence of cancer." A second text came a few seconds later.

**I mean, he's blind. So that's unfortunate.**

That afternoon, Mom consented to loan me the car so I could drive down to Memorial to check in on Simon.

I found my way to his room on the fifth floor, knocking even though the door was open, and a woman's voice said, "Come in." It was a nurse who was doing something to the bandages on Simon's eyes. "Hey, Simon," I said.

And he said, "Clary?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could."

"He's kidding," the nurse said.

"Yes," I said. "I realize."

I took a few steps toward the bed. I pulled a chair up and sat down, took his hand. "Hey," I said.

"Hey," he said back. Then nothing for a while.

"How you feeling?" I asked.

"Okay," he said. "I don't know."

"You don't know what?" I asked. I looked at his hand because I didn't want to look at his face blindfolded by bandages. Isaac bit his nails, and I could see some blood on the corners of a couple of his cuticles.

"Where Izzy is."

"Oh! That reminds me. She told me to tell you that she'll be here later. She was going to the doctor's to get fitted for a prosthetic."

The nurse, having finished the bandage change, stepped back. "Believe the girl. She'll be here. No need to worry. You'll see." With that, she left.

I nodded, then realized he couldn't see me nod. "Yeah," I said.

"I'll _see_? Really? Did she seriously say that?"

"Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," I said.

"1. Doesn't pun on your disability," Simon said.

"2. Gets blood on the first try," I said.

"Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dart-board? 3. No condescending voice."

"How are you doing, sweetie?" I asked, cloying. "I'm going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie."

"Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?" he answered. And then after a second, "Most of them are good, actually. I just want the hell out of this place."

"This place as in the hospital?"

"Yep. Jace was here earlier. He was here when I woke up. Took off school. He . . ." His head turned to the side a little. "It's better," he said quietly.

"The pain?" I asked. He nodded a little.

"Good," I said. And then, like the bitch I am: "You were saying something about Jace?" But he was gone.

I went downstairs to the tiny windowless gift shop and asked the decrepit volunteer sitting on a stool behind a cash register what kind of flowers smell the strongest.

"They all smell the same. They get sprayed with Super Scent," she said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, they just squirt 'em with it."

I opened the cooler to her left and sniffed at a dozen roses, and then leaned over some carnations. Same smell, and lots of it. The carnations were cheaper, so I grabbed a dozen yellow ones. They cost fourteen dollars. I went back into the room; his mom was there, holding his hand. She was young and really pretty.

"Clary," she smiled. "How are you?"

"Good. Great actually. This are for Si." I handed her the flowers.

"Well, he's sleeping," she said.

"Yeah. I talked to him a little before, when they were doing the bandages or whatever."

"I hated leaving him for that but I had to pick up Sebastian at school," she said.

"He did okay," I told her. She nodded. "I should let him sleep." She nodded again. I left.

The next morning I woke up early and checked my email first thing.

Peter had finally replied.

Dear Ms. Fray,

I fear your faith has been misplaced—but then, faith usually is. I cannot answer your questions, at least not in writing, because to write out such answers would constitute a sequel to _An Imperial Affliction,_ which you might publish or otherwise share on the network that has replaced the brains of your generation. There is the telephone, but then you might record the conversation. Not that I don't trust you, of course, but I don't trust you. Alas, dear Clarissa, I could never answer such questions except in person, and you are there, while I am here.

That noted, I must confess that the unexpected receipt of your correspondence via Ms. Vliegenthart has delighted me: What a wondrous thing to know that I made something useful to you—even if that book seems so distant from me that I feel it was written by a different man altogether. (The author of that novel was so thin, so frail, so comparatively optimistic!)

Should you find yourself in Amsterdam, however, please do pay a visit at your leisure. I am usually home. I would even allow you a peek at my grocery lists.

Yours most sincerely,

Peter Van Houten

c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart

"WHAT?!" I shouted aloud. "WHAT IS THIS LIFE?" Mom ran in. "What's wrong?"

_"Nothing,"_ I assured her.

Still nervous, Mom knelt down to check on Philip to ensure he was condensing oxygen appropriately. I imagined sitting at a sun-drenched café with Peter Van Houten as he leaned across the table on his elbows, speaking in a soft voice so no one else would hear the truth of what happened to the characters I'd spent years thinking about. He'd said he couldn't tell me _except in person_, and then _invited me to Amsterdam_. I explained this to Mom, and then said, "I have to go."

"Clary, I love you, and you know I'd do anything for you, but we don't—we don't have the money for international travel, and the expense of getting equipment over there—love, it's just not—"

"Yeah," I said, cutting her off. I realized I'd been silly even to consider it. "Don't worry about it." But she looked worried.

"It's really important to you, yeah?" she asked, sitting down, a hand on my calf.

"It would be pretty amazing," I said, "to be the only person who knows what happens besides him."

"That would be amazing," she said. "I'll talk to your father."

"No, don't," I said. "Just, seriously, don't spend any money on it please. I'll think of something."

It occurred to me that the reason my parents had no money was me.

I'd sapped the family savings with Phalanxifor copays, and Mom couldn't work because she had taken on the full-time profession of Hovering Over Me. I didn't want to put them even further into debt.

I told Mom I wanted to call Jace to get her out of the room, because I couldn't handle her I-can't-make-my-daughter's-dreams-come-true sad face.

Jace Herondale–style, I read him the letter in lieu of saying hello

"Wow," he said.

"I know, right?" I said. "How am I going to get to Amsterdam?"

"Do you have a Wish?" he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the business of granting sick kids one wish.

"No," I said. "I used my Wish pre-Miracle."

"What'd you do?"

I sighed loudly. "I was thirteen," I said.

"Not Disney," he said.

I said nothing.

"You did not go to Disney World."

I said nothing.

"CLARE!" he shouted. "You _did not_ use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents."

"Also Epcot Center," I mumbled.

"Oh, my God," Jace said. "I can't believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes."

"I was _thirteen_," I said again, although of course I was only thinking _crush crush crush crush crush_. I was flattered but changed the subject immediately. "Shouldn't you be in school or something?"

"I'm playing hooky to hang out with Simon, but he's sleeping, so I'm in the atrium doing geometry."

"How's he doing?" I asked.

"Fine, I guess."

"How long's he gonna be in the hospital?"

"Few days. Then he goes to this rehab or something for a while, but he gets to sleep at home, I think."

"Sucks," I said.

"I see his mom. I gotta go."

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he answered. I could hear his crooked smile.

On Saturday, my parents and I went down to the farmers' market in Broad Ripple. It was sunny, a rarity for Indiana in April, and everyone at the farmers' market was wearing short sleeves even though the temperature didn't quite justify it. We Hoosiers are excessively optimistic about summer. Mom and I sat next to each other on a bench across from a goat-soap maker, a man in overalls who had to explain to every single person who walked by that yes, they were his goats, and no, goat soap does not smell like goats.

My phone rang. "Who is it?" Mom asked before I could even check.

"I don't know," I said. It was Jace, though.

"Are you currently at your house?" he asked.

"Um, no," I said.

"That was a trick question. I knew the answer, because I am currently at your house."

"Oh. Um. Well, we are on our way, I guess?"

"Awesome. See you soon."

Jace was sitting on the front step as we pulled into the driveway. He was holding a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom, and wearing an Indiana Pacers jersey under his fleece, a wardrobe choice that seemed utterly out of character, although it did look quite good on him. He pushed himself up off the stoop, handed me the tulips, and asked, "Wanna go on a picnic?" I nodded, taking the flowers.

My dad walked up behind me and shook Jace's hand.

"Is that a Rik Smits jersey?" my dad asked.

"Indeed it is."

"God, I loved that guy," Dad said, and immediately they were en-grossed in a basketball conversation I could not (and did not want to) join, so I took my tulips inside.

"Do you want me to put those in a vase?" Mom asked as I walked in, a huge smile on her face.

"No, it's okay," I told her. If we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.

I went to my room but didn't change. I brushed my hair and teeth and put on some lip gloss and the smallest possible dab of perfume. I kept looking at the flowers. They were_aggressively_ orange, almost too orange to be pretty. I didn't have a vase or anything, so I took my toothbrush out of my toothbrush holder and filled it halfway with water and left the flowers there in the bathroom.

When I reentered my room, I could hear people talking, so I sat on the edge of my bed for a while and listened through my hollow bedroom door:

Dad: "So you met Clary at Support Group."

Jace: "Well actually Sir, I met her through Alec and Isabelle Lightwood. This is a lovely house you've got. I like your artwork."

Mom: "Thank you, Jace. Clary actually did the artwork."

Dad: "You're a survivor yourself, then?"

Jace: "I am. I didn't cut this fella off for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, although it is an excellent weight-loss strategy. Legs are heavy!"

Dad: "And how's your health now?"

Jace: "NEC for fourteen months."

Mom: "That's wonderful. The treatment options these days—it really is remarkable."

Jace: "I know. I'm lucky."

Dad: "You have to understand that Clary is still sick, Jace, and will be for the rest of her life. She'll want to keep up with you, but her lungs—"

At which point I emerged, silencing him.

"So where are you going?" asked Mom. Jace stood up and leaned over to her, whispering the answer, and then held a finger to his lips.

"Shh," he told her. "It's a secret."

Mom smiled. "You've got your phone?" she asked me. I held it up as evidence, tilted my oxygen cart onto its front wheels, and started walking. Jace hustled over, offering me his arm, which I took. My fingers wrapped around his biceps.

Unfortunately, he insisted upon driving, so the surprise could be a surprise. As we shuddered toward our destination, I said, "You nearly charmed the pants off my mom."

"Yeah, and your dad is a Smits fan, which helps. You think they liked me?"

"Sure they did. Who cares, though? They're just parents."

"They're _your_ parents," he said, glancing over at me. "Plus, I like being liked. Is that crazy?"

"Well, you don't have to rush to hold doors open or smother me in compliments for me to like you." He slammed the brakes, and I flew forward hard enough that my breathing felt weird and tight. I thought of the PET scan. _Don't worry. Worry is useless._ I worried anyway.

We burned rubber, roaring away from a stop sign before turning left onto the misnomered Grandview (there's a view of a golf course, I guess, but nothing _grand_). The only thing I could think of in this direction was the cemetery. Jace reached into the center console, flipped open a full pack of cigarettes, and removed one.

"Do you ever throw them away?" I asked him.

"One of the many benefits of not smoking is that packs of cigarettes last _forever_," he answered. "I've had this one for almost a year. A few of them are broken near the filters, but I think this pack could easily get me to my eighteenth birthday." He held the filter between his fingers, then put it in his mouth. "So, okay," he said. "Okay. Name some things that you never see in Indianapolis."

"Um. Skinny adults," I said.

He laughed. "Good. Keep going."

"Mmm, beaches. Family-owned restaurants. Topography."

"All excellent examples of things we lack. Also, culture."

"Yeah, we are a bit short on culture," I said, finally realizing where he was taking me. "Are we going to the museum?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Oh, are we going to that park or whatever?" Jace looked a bit deflated. "Yes, we are going to that park or whatever," he said. "You've figured it out, haven't you?"

"Um, figured what out?"

"Nothing."

There was this park behind the museum where a bunch of artists had made big sculptures. I'd heard about it but had never visited. We drove past the museum and parked right next to this basketball court filled with huge blue and red steel arcs that imagined the path of a bouncing ball.

We walked down what passes for a hill in Indianapolis to this clearing where kids were climbing all over this huge oversize skeleton sculpture. The bones were each about waist high, and the thighbone was longer than me. It looked like a child's drawing of a skeleton rising up out of the ground.

My shoulder hurt. I worried the cancer had spread from my lungs. I imagined the tumor metastasizing into my own bones, boring holes in-to my skeleton, a slithering eel of insidious intent. _"Funky Bones,"_ Jace said. "Created by Joep Van Lieshout."

"Sounds Dutch."

"He is," Jace said. "So is Rik Smits. So are tulips." Jace stopped in the middle of the clearing with the bones right in front of us and slipped his backpack off one shoulder, then the other. He unzipped it, producing an orange blanket, a pint of orange juice, and some sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrap with the crusts cut off.

"What's with all the orange?" I asked, still not wanting to let myself imagine that all this would lead to Amsterdam.

"National color of the Netherlands, of course. You remember William of Orange and everything?"

"He wasn't on the GED test." I smiled, trying to contain my excitement.

"Sandwich?" he asked.

"Let me guess," I said.

"Dutch cheese. And tomato. The tomatoes are from Mexico. Sorry."

"You're always such a _disappointment_, Jace. Couldn't you have at least gotten orange tomatoes?"

He laughed, and we ate our sandwiches in silence, watching the kids play on the sculpture. I couldn't very well _ask_ him about it, so I just sat there surrounded by Dutchness, feeling awkward and hopeful.

In the distance, soaked in the unblemished sunlight so rare and precious in our hometown, a gaggle of kids made a skeleton into a playground, jumping back and forth among the prosthetic bones.

"Two things I love about this sculpture," Jace said. He was holding the unlit cigarette between his fingers, flicking at it as if to get rid of the ash. He placed it back in his mouth. "First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you're a kid, you _cannot resist the urge_ to jump between them. Like, you just _have_ to jump from rib cage to skull. Which means that, second, the sculpture essentially _forces children to_ _play on bones_. The symbolic resonances are endless, Clare."

"You do love symbols," I said, hoping to steer the conversation back toward the many symbols of the Netherlands at our picnic.

"Right, about that. You are probably wondering why you are eating a bad cheese sandwich and drinking orange juice and why I am wearing the jersey of a Dutchman who played a sport I have come to loathe."

"It has crossed my mind," I said.

"Jace, like so many children before you—and I say this with great affection—you spent your Wish hastily, with little care for the consequences. The Grim Reaper was staring you in the face and the fear of dying with your Wish still in your proverbial pocket, ungranted, led you to rush toward the first Wish you could think of, and you, like so many others, chose the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park."

"I actually had a great time on that trip. I met Goofy and Minn—"

"I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up," Jace interrupted. "Please to be eating your sandwich and listening." (The sandwich was inedibly dry, but I smiled and took a bite anyway.)

"Okay, where was I?"

"The artificial pleasures."

He returned the cigarette to its pack. "Right, the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park. But let me submit that the real heroes of the Wish Factory are the young men and women who wait like Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot and good Christian girls wait for marriage. These young heroes wait stoically and without complaint for their one true Wish to come along. Sure, it may never come along, but at least they can rest easily in the grave knowing that they've done their little part to preserve the integrity of the Wish as an idea.

"But then again, maybe it _will_ come along: Maybe you'll realize that your one true Wish is to visit the brilliant Peter Van Houten in his Amsterdamian exile, and you will be glad indeed to have saved your Wish."

Jace stopped speaking long enough that I figured the soliloquy was over. "But I didn't save my Wish," I said.

"Ah," he said. And then, after what felt like a practiced pause, he added, "But I saved mine."

"Really?" I was surprised that Jace was Wish-eligible, what with being still in school and a year into remission. You had to be pretty sick for the Genies to hook you up with a Wish.

"I got it in exchange for the leg," he explained. There was all this light on his face; he had to squint to look at me, which made his nose crinkle adorably. "Now, I'm not going to _give_ you my Wish or anything. But I also have an interest in meeting Peter Van Houten, and it wouldn't make sense to meet him without the girl who introduced me to his book."

"It definitely wouldn't," I said.

"So I talked to the Genies, and they are in total agreement. They said Amsterdam is lovely in the beginning of May. They proposed leaving May third and returning May seventh."

"Jace, really?"

He reached over and touched my cheek and for a moment I thought he might kiss me. My body tensed, and I think he saw it, because he pulled his hand away.

"Jace," I said. "Really. You don't have to do this."

"Sure I do," he said. "I found my Wish."

"God, you're the best," I told him.

"I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel," he answered.

Mom was folding my laundry while watching this TV show called _The_ _View_ when I got home. I told her that the tulips and the Dutch artist and everything were all because Jace was using his Wish to take me to Amsterdam. "That's too much," she said, shaking her head. "We can't accept that from a virtual stranger."

"He's not a stranger. He's easily my fifth best friend."

"Behind Isabelle?"

"Behind you," I said. It was true, but I'd mostly said it because I wanted to go to Amsterdam.

"I'll ask Dr. Herondale," she said after a moment.

Dr. Herondale said I couldn't go to Amsterdam without an adult intimately familiar with my case, which more or less meant either Mom or Dr. Herondale herself. Which I thought was funny considering that Dr. Herondale was Jace's grandmother. (My dad understood my cancer the way I did: in the vague and incomplete way people understand electrical circuits and ocean tides. But my mom knew more about differentiated thyroid carcinoma in adolescents than most oncologists.)

"So you'll come," I said. "The Genies will pay for it. The Genies are loaded."

"But your father," she said. "He would miss us. It wouldn't be fair to him, and he can't get time off work."

"Are you kidding? You don't think Dad would enjoy a few days of watching TV shows that are not about aspiring models and ordering pizza every night, using paper towels as plates so he doesn't have to do the dishes?"

Mom laughed. Finally, she started to get excited, typing tasks into her phone. I kind of had a headache, so I downed a couple Advil and decided to take a nap.

But I ended up just lying in bed and replaying the whole picnic with Jace. I couldn't stop thinking about the little moment when I'd tensed up as he touched me. The gentle familiarity felt wrong, some how. I thought maybe it was how orchestrated the whole thing had been: Jace was amazing, but he'd overdone everything at the picnic, right down to the sandwiches that were metaphorically resonant but tasted terrible and the memorized soliloquy that prevented conversation. It all felt Romantic, but not romantic.

But the truth is that I had never wanted him to kiss me, not in the way you are supposed to want these things. I mean, he was gorgeous. I was attracted to him. I thought about him _in that way_, to borrow a phrase from the middle school vernacular. But the actual touch, the realized touch . . . it was all wrong.

Then I found myself worrying I would _have_ to make out with him to get to Amsterdam, which is not the kind of thing you want to be thinking, because (a) It shouldn't've even been a _question_ whether I wanted to kiss him, and (b) Kissing someone so that you can get a free trip is perilously close to full-on hooking, and I have to confess that while I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.

But then again, he hadn't tried to kiss me; he'd only touched my face, which is not even _sexual_. It was not a move designed to elicit arousal, but it was certainly a designed move, because Augustus Waters was no improviser. So what had he been trying to convey? And why hadn't I wanted to accept it?

At some point, I realized I was Izzying the encounter, so I decided to text Izzy and ask for some advice. She called immediately.

"I have a boy problem," I said.

"DELICIOUS," Izzy responded. I told her all about it, complete with the awkward face touching, leaving out only Amsterdam and Jace's name. "You're sure he's hot?" she asked when I was finished.

"Pretty sure," I said.

"Athletic?"

"Yeah, he used to play basketball for North Central."

"Wow. How'd you meet him?"

"Through my friends."

Izzy laughed darkly. "I knew it! It's Jace."

"Um, maybe?"

"Oh, my God," she squealed.

"I definitely like him."

"Hmm," she said.

"Hmm," I said.

"I don't know what to tell you, but in the event you do hook up with him, I expect lascivious details."

"But of course," I said, and we both laughed. "Bye." With that she hung up.

I pulled out my laptop and looked up Aline Penhallow. Sure, I could have asked Izzy about her but then that would have been rude. The physical similarities were striking: same steroidally round face, same nose, same approximate overall body shape. But her eyes were dark brown (mine are green) and her complexion was much darker—Italian or something.

Thousands of people—literally thousands—had left condolence messages for her. It was an endless scroll of people who missed her, so many that it took me an hour of clicking to get past the _I'm sorry_ _you're dead_ wall posts to the _I'm praying for you_ wall posts. She'd died a year ago of brain cancer. I was able to click through to some of her pictures. Jace was in a bunch of the earlier ones: pointing with a thumbs-up to the jagged scar across her bald skull; arm in arm at Memorial Hospital's playground, with their backs facing the camera; kissing while Aline held the camera out, so you could only see their noses and closed eyes.

The most recent pictures were all of her before, when she was healthy, uploaded postmortem by friends: a beautiful girl, wide-hipped and curvy, with long, straight deadblack hair falling over her face. My healthy self looked very little like her healthy self. But our cancer selves might've been sisters. No wonder he'd stared at me the first time he saw me.

I kept clicking back to this one wall post, written two months ago, nine months after she died, by one of her friends. _We all miss you so much._

_It just never ends. It feels like we were all wounded in your battle,_ _Aline. I miss you. I love you._

After a while, Mom and Dad announced it was time for dinner. I shut down the computer and got up, but I couldn't get the wall post out of my mind, and for some reason it made me nervous and unhungry.

I kept thinking about my shoulder, which hurt, and also I still had the headache, but maybe only because I'd been thinking about a girl who'd died of brain cancer. I kept telling myself to compartmentalize, to be here now at the circular table (arguably too large in diameter for three people and definitely too large for two) with this soggy broccoli and a black-bean burger that all the ketchup in the world could not adequately moisten. I told myself that imagining a met in my brain or my shoulder would not affect the invisible reality going on inside of me, and that therefore all such thoughts were wasted moments in a life composed of a definitionally finite set of such moments. I even tried to tell myself to live my best life today.

For the longest time I couldn't figure out why something a stranger had written on the Internet to a different (and deceased) stranger was bothering me so much and making me worry that there was something inside my brain—which really did hurt, although I knew from years of experience that pain is a blunt and nonspecific diagnostic instrument.

Because there had not been an earthquake in Papua New Guinea that day, my parents were all hyperfocused on me, and so I could not hide this flash flood of anxiety.

"Is everything all right?" asked Mom as I ate.

"Uh-huh," I said. I took a bite of burger. Swallowed. Tried to say something that a normal person whose brain was not drowning in panic would say. "Is there broccoli in the burgers?"

"A little," Dad said. "Pretty exciting that you might go to Amsterdam."

"Yeah," I said. I tried not to think about the word _wounded_, which of course is a way of thinking about it.

"Clary," Mom said. "Where are you right now?"

"Just thinking, I guess," I said.

"Twitterpated," my dad said, smiling.

"I am not a bunny, and I am not in love with Jace or anyone," I answered, way too defensively. _Wounded_. Like Aline Penhallow had been a bomb and when she blew up everyone around her was left with embedded shrapnel.

Dad asked me if I was working on anything for school. "I've got some very advanced Algebra homework," I told him. "So advanced that I couldn't possibly explain it to a layperson."

"And how's Simon?"

"Blind," I said.

"You're being very teenagery today," Mom said. She seemed annoyed about it.

"Isn't this what you wanted, Mom? For me to be teenagery?"

"Well, not necessarily _this_ kinda teenagery, but of course your father and I are excited to see you become a young woman, making friends, going on dates."

"I'm not going on dates," I said. "I don't want to go on dates with anyone. It's a terrible idea and a huge waste of time and—"

"Honey," my mom said. "What's wrong?"

"I'm like. Like. I'm like a _grenade_, Mom. I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?"

My dad tilted his head a little to the side, like a scolded puppy.

"I'm a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you; you're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay? I'm not depressed. I don't need to get out more. And I can't be a regular teenager, because I'm a grenade."

"Clary," Dad said, and then choked up. He cried a lot, my dad.

"I'm going to go to my room and read for a while, okay? I'm fine. I really am fine; I just want to go read for a while." I started out trying to read this novel I'd been assigned, but we lived in a tragically thin-walled home, so I could hear much of the whispered conversation that ensued. My dad saying, "It kills me," and my mom saying, "That's exactly what she _doesn't_ need to hear," and my dad saying, "I'm sorry but—" and my mom saying, "Are you not grateful?" And him saying, "God, of course I'm grateful." I kept trying to get into this story but I couldn't stop hearing them.

So I turned on my computer to listen to some music, and with Jace's favorite band, The Hectic Glow, as my sound track, I went back to Aline Penhallow's tribute pages, reading about how heroic her fight was, and how much she was missed, and how she was in a better place, and how she would live _forever_ in their memories, and how everyone who knew her—everyone—was laid low by her leaving.

Maybe I was supposed to hate Aline Pehallow or something because she'd been with Jace, but I didn't. I couldn't see her very clearly amid all the tributes, but there didn't seem to be much to hate—she seemed to be mostly a professional sick person, like me, which made me worry that when I died they'd have nothing to say about me except that I fought heroically, as if the only thing I'd ever done was Have Cancer.

Anyway, eventually I started reading Aline Penhallow's little notes, which were mostly actually written by her parents, because I guess her brain cancer was of the variety that makes you not you before it makes you not alive.

So it was all like,_ Jace continues to have behavioral problems._

_She's struggling a lot with anger and frustration over not being able_ _to speak (we are frustrated about these things, too, of course, but we_ _have more socially acceptable ways of dealing with our anger). Jace_ _has taken to calling Aline HULK SMASH, which resonates with_ _the doctors. There's nothing easy about this for any of us, but you_ _take your humor where you can get it. Hoping to go home on_ _Thursday. We'll let you know . . ._

She didn't go home on Thursday, needless to say.

So of course I tensed up when he touched me. To be with him was to hurt him—inevitably. And that's what I'd felt as he reached for me: I'd felt as though I were committing an act of violence against him, because I was.

I decided to text him. I wanted to avoid a whole conversation about it.

**Hi, so okay, I don't know if you'll understand this but I can't kiss you or anything. Not that you'd necessarily want to, but I can't.**

**When I try to look at you like that, all I see is what I'm going to put you through. Maybe that doesn't make sense to you.**

**Anyway, sorry.**

He responded a few minutes later.

**Okay.**

I wrote back.

**Okay.**

He responded:

**Oh, my God, stop flirting with me!**

I just said:

**Okay.**

My phone buzzed moments later.

**I was kidding, Clare. I understand. (But we both know that okay is a very flirty word. Okay is BURSTING with sensuality.)**

I was very tempted to respond _Okay_ again, but I pictured him at my funeral, and that helped me text properly.

**Sorry.**

I tried to go to sleep with my headphones still on, but then after a while my mom and dad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluie from the shelf and hugged him to her stomach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair, and without crying he said, "You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Clary, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness."

"Okay," I said.

"Really," my dad said. "I wouldn't bullshit you about this. If you were more trouble than you're worth, we'd just toss you out on the streets."

"We're not sentimental people," Mom added, deadpan. "We'd leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas." I laughed.

"You don't have to go to Support Group," Mom added. "You don't have to do anything. Except go to school." She handed me the bear.

"I think Bluie can sleep on the shelf tonight," I said. "Let me remind you that I am more than thirty-three half years old."

"Keep him tonight," she said.

"Mom," I said.

"He's _lonely_," she said.

"Oh, my God, Mom," I said. But I took stupid Bluie and kind of cuddled with him as I fell asleep.

I still had one arm draped over Bluie, in fact, when I awoke just after four in the morning with an apocalyptic pain fingering out from the unreachable center of my head.

I screamed to wake up my parents, and they burst into the room, but there was nothing they could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of intracranial firecrackers that made me think that I was once and for all going, and I told myself—as I've told myself before—that the body shuts down when the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn't slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.

Dad drove, talking on the phone with the hospital, while I lay in the back with my head in Mom's lap. There was nothing to do: Screaming made it worse. All stimuli made it worse, actually.

The only solution was to try to unmake the world, to make it black and silent and uninhabited again, to return to the moment before the Big Bang, in the beginning when there was the Word, and to live in that vacuous uncreated space alone with the Word.

People talk about the courage of cancer patients, and I do not deny that courage. I had been poked and stabbed and poisoned for years, and still I trod on. But make no mistake: In that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die.

I woke up in the ICU. I could tell I was in the ICU because I didn't have my own room, and because there was so much beeping, and because I was alone: They don't let your family stay with you 24/7 in the ICU at Children's because it's an infection risk. There was wailing down the hall. Somebody's kid had died. I was alone. I hit the red call button.

A nurse came in seconds later. "Hi," I said.

"Hello, Clary. I'm Kaelie, your nurse," she said.

"Hi, Kaelie My Nurse," I said.

Whereupon I started to feel pretty tired again. But I woke up a bit when my parents came in, crying and kissing my face repeatedly, and I reached up for them and tried to squeeze, but my everything hurt when I squeezed, and Mom and Dad told me that I did not have a brain tumor, but that my headache was caused by poor oxygenation, which was caused by my lungs swimming in fluid, a liter and a half (!) of which had been successfully drained from my chest, which was why I might feel a slight discomfort in my side, where there was, _hey_ _look at that_, a tube that went from my chest into a plastic bladder half full of liquid that for all the world resembled my dad's favorite amber ale. Mom told me I was going to go home, that I really was, that I would just have to get this drained every now and again and get back on the BiPAP, this nighttime machine that forces air in and out of my crap lungs. But I'd had a total body PET scan on the first night in the hospital, they told me, and the news was good: no tumor growth. No new tumors. My shoulder pain had been lack-of-oxygen pain. Heart-working-too-hard pain.

"Dr. Imogen said this morning that she remains optimistic," Dad said. I liked Dr. Imogen, and she didn't bullshit you, so that felt good to hear.

"This is just a thing, Clary," my mom said. "It's a thing we can live with."

I nodded, and then Kaelie My Nurse kind of politely made them leave.

She asked me if I wanted some ice chips, and I nodded, and then she sat at the bed with me and spooned them into my mouth.

"So you've been gone a couple days," Kaelie said. "Hmm, what'd you miss . . . A celebrity did drugs. Politicians disagreed. A different celebrity wore a bikini that revealed a bodily imperfection. A team won a sporting event, but another team lost." I smiled. "You can't go disappearing on everybody like this, Clary. You miss too much."

"More?" I asked, nodding toward the white Styrofoam cup in her hand.

"I shouldn't," she said, "but I'm a rebel." She gave me another plastic spoonful of crushed ice. I mumbled a thank-you. Praise God for good nurses. "Getting tired?" she asked. I nodded. "Sleep for a while," she said. "I'll try to run interference and give you a couple hours before somebody comes in to check vitals and the like." I said Thanks again.

You say thanks a lot in a hospital. I tried to settle into the bed. "You're not gonna ask about your boyfriend?" she asked.

"Don't have one," I told her.

"Well, there's a kid who has hardly left the waiting room since you got here," she said.

"He hasn't seen me like this, has he?"

"No. Family only."

I nodded and sank into an aqueous sleep.

It would take me six days to get home, six undays of staring at acoustic ceiling tile and watching television and sleeping and pain and wishing for time to pass. I did not see Jace or anyone other than my parents. My hair looked like a bird's nest; my shuffling gait like a dementia patient's. I felt a little better each day, though: Each sleep ended to reveal a person who seemed a bit more like me. Sleep fights cancer, Regular Dr. Jim said for the thousandth time as he hovered over me one morning surrounded by a coterie of medical students.

"Then I am a cancer-fighting machine," I told him.

"That you are, Clary. Keep resting, and hopefully we'll get you home soon."

On Tuesday, they told me I'd go home on Wednesday. On Wednesday, two minimally supervised medical students removed my chest tube, which felt like getting stabbed in reverse and generally didn't go very well, so they decided I'd have to stay until Thursday. I was beginning to think that I was the subject of some existentialist experiment in permanently delayed gratification when Dr. Imogen showed up on Friday morning, sniffed around me for a minute, and told me I was good to go.

So Mom opened her oversize purse to reveal that she'd had my Go Home Clothes with her all along. A nurse came in and took out my IV.

I felt untethered even though I still had the oxygen tank to carry around with me. I went into the bathroom, took my first shower in a week, got dressed, and when I got out, I was so tired I had to lie down and get my breath. Mom asked, "Do you want to see Jace?"

"I guess," I said after a minute. I stood up and shuffled over to one of the molded plastic chairs against the wall, tucking my tank beneath the chair. It wore me out.

Dad came back with Jace a few minutes later. His hair was messy, sweeping down over his forehead. He lit up with a real Jace Goofy Smile when he saw me, and I couldn't help but smile back. He sat down in the blue faux-leather recliner next to my chair.

He leaned in toward me, seemingly incapable of stifling the smile.

Mom and Dad left us alone, which felt awkward. I worked hard to meet his eyes, even though they were the kind of pretty that's hard to look at. "I missed you," Jace said.

My voice was smaller than I wanted it to be. "Thanks for not trying to see me when I looked like hell."

"To be fair, you still look pretty bad." I laughed. "I missed you, too. I just don't want you to see . . . all this. I just want, like . . . It doesn't matter. You don't always get what you want."

"Is that so?" he asked. "I'd always thought the world was a wish-granting factory."

"Turns out that is not the case," I said. He was so beautiful. He reached for my hand but I shook my head. "No," I said quietly. "If we're gonna hang out, it has to be, like, not that."

"Okay," he said. "Well, I have good news and bad news on the wish-granting front."

"Okay?" I said.

"The bad news is that we obviously can't go to Amsterdam until you're better. The Genies will, however, work their famous magic when you're well enough."

"That's the good news?"

"No, the good news is that while you were sleeping, Peter Van Houten shared a bit more of his brilliant brain with us." He reached for my hand again, but this time to slip into it a heavily folded sheet of stationery on the letterhead of _Peter Van Houten, Novelist Emeritus_.

I didn't read it until I got home, situated in my own huge and empty bed with no chance of medical interruption. It took me forever to decode Van Houten's sloped, scratchy script.

Dear Mr. Herondale,

I am in receipt of your electronic mail dated the 14th of April and duly impressed by the Shakespearean complexity of your tragedy. Everyone in this tale has a rock-solid _hamartia_: hers, that she is so sick; yours, that you are so well. Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves." Easy enough to say when you're a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars.

While we're on the topic of old Will's insufficiencies, your writing about young Clary reminds me of the Bard's Fifty-fifth sonnet, which of course begins, "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; / But you shall shine more bright in these contents / Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time." (Off topic, but: What a slut time is. She screws everybody.) It's a fine poem but a deceitful one: We do indeed remember Shakespeare's powerful rhyme, but what do we remember about the person it commemorates? Nothing. We're pretty sure he was male; everything else is guesswork. Shakespeare told us precious little of the man whom he entombed in his linguistic sarcophagus. (Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.) You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect. (Full disclosure: I am not the first to make this observation. In, the MacLeish poem "Not Marble, Nor the Gilded Monuments," which contains the heroic line "I shall say you will die and none will remember you.") I digress, but here's the rub: The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory. The living, thank heaven, retain the ability to surprise and to disappoint. Your Clary is alive, Herondale, and you mustn't impose your will upon another's decision, particularly a decision arrived at thoughtfully. She wishes to spare you pain, and you should let her. You may not find young Clary's logic persuasive, but I have trod through this vale of tears longer than you, and from where I'm sitting, she's not the lunatic.

Yours truly,

Peter Van Houten

It was really written by him. I licked my finger and dabbed the paper and the ink bled a little, so I knew it was really real.

"Mom," I said. I did not say it loudly, but I didn't have to. She was always waiting. She peeked her head around the door.

"You okay, sweetie?"

"Can we call Dr. Imogen and ask if international travel would kill me?"

We had a big Cancer Team Meeting a couple days later. Every so often, a bunch of doctors and social workers and physical therapists and whoever else got together around a big table in a conference room and discussed my situation. (Not the Jace situation or the Amsterdam situation. The cancer situation.) Dr. Imogen led the meeting. She hugged me when I got there. She was a hugger.

I felt a little better, I guess. Sleeping with the BiPAP all night made my lungs feel almost normal, although, then again, I did not really remember lung normality.

Everyone got there and made a big show of turning off their pagers and everything so it would be _all about me_, and then Dr. Imogen,

"So the great news is that Phalanxifor continues to control your tumor growth, but obviously we're still seeing serious problems with fluid accumulation. So the question is, how should we proceed?" And then she just looked at me, like she was waiting for an answer.

"Um," I said, "I feel like I am not the most qualified person in the room to answer that question?"

She smiled. "Right, I was waiting for Dr. Simons. Dr. Simons?" He was another cancer doctor of some kind.

"Well, we know from other patients that most tumors eventually evolve a way to grow in spite of Phalanxifor, but if that were the case, we'd see tumor growth on the scans, which we don't see. So it's not that yet."

_Yet_, I thought.

Dr. Simons tapped at the table with his forefinger. "The thought around here is that it's possible the Phalanxifor is worsening the edema, but we'd face far more serious problems if we discontinued its use."

Dr. Imogen said. "We don't really understand the long-term effects of Phalanxifor. Very few people have been on it as long as you have."

"So we're gonna do nothing?"

"We're going to stay the course," Dr. Imogen said, "but we'll need to do more to keep that edema from building up." I felt kind of sick for some reason, like I was going to throw up. I hated Cancer Team Meetings in general, but I hated this one in particular. "Your cancer is not going away, Clary. But we've seen people live with your level of tumor penetration for a long time." (I did not ask what constituted a long time. I'd made that mistake before.) "I know that coming out of the ICU, it doesn't feel this way, but this fluid is, at least for the time being, manageable."

"Can't I just get like a lung transplant or something?" I asked.

Dr. Imogen's lips shrank into her mouth. "You would not be considered a strong candidate for a transplant, unfortunately," she said. I understood: No use wasting good lungs on a hopeless case. I nodded, trying not to look like that comment hurt me. My dad started crying a little. I didn't look over at him, but no one said anything for a long time, so his hiccuping cry was the only sound in the room.

I hated hurting him. Most of the time, I could forget about it, but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around, but I was the alpha and the omega of my parents' suffering.

Just before the Miracle, when I was in the ICU and it looked like I was going to die and Mom was telling me it was okay to let go, and I was trying to let go but my lungs kept searching for air, Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds out that I did hear. She said, "I won't be a mom anymore." It gutted me pretty badly.

I couldn't stop thinking about that during the whole Cancer Team Meeting. I couldn't get it out of my head, how she sounded when she said that, like she would never be okay again, which probably she wouldn't.

Anyway, eventually we decided to keep things the same only with more frequent fluid drainings. At the end, I asked if I could travel to Amsterdam, and Dr. Simons actually and literally laughed, but then Dr. Imogen said, "Why not?" And Simons said, dubiously, "Why not?" And Dr. Imogen said, "Yeah, I don't see why not. They've got oxygen on the planes, after all." Dr. Simons said, "Are they just going to gate-check a BiPAP?" And Imogen said, "Yeah, or have one waiting for her."

"Placing a patient—one of the most promising Phalanxifor survivors, no less—an eight-hour flight from the only physicians intimately familiar with her case? That's a recipe for disaster." Dr. Imogen shrugged. "It would increase some risks," she acknowledged, but then turned to me and said, "But it's your life." Except not really. On the car ride home, my parents agreed: I would not be going to Amsterdam unless and until there was medical agreement that it would be safe.

Jace called that night after dinner. I was already in bed—after dinner had become my bedtime for the moment—propped up with a gajillion pillows and also Bluie, with my computer on my lap.

I picked up, saying, "Bad news," and he said, "Shit, what?"

"I can't go to Amsterdam. One of my doctors thinks it's a bad idea." He was quiet for a second. "God," he said. "I should've just paid for it myself. Should've just taken you straight from the _Funky Bones_ to Amsterdam."

"But then I would've had a probably fatal episode of deoxygenation in Amsterdam, and my body would have been shipped home in the cargo hold of an airplane," I said.

"Well, yeah," he said. "But before that, my grand romantic gesture would have totally gotten me laid."

I laughed pretty hard, hard enough that I felt where the chest tube had been.

"You laugh because it's true," he said.

I laughed again.

"It's true, isn't it!"

"Probably not," I said, and then after a moment added, "although you never know."

He moaned in misery. "I'm gonna die a virgin," he said.

"You're a virgin?" I asked, surprised.

"Clare," he said, "do you have a pen and a piece of paper?" I said I did. "Okay, please draw a circle." I did. "Now draw a smaller circle within that circle." I did. "The larger circle is virgins. The smaller circle is seventeen-year-old guys with one leg." I laughed again, and told him that having most of your social engagements occur at a children's hospital also did not encourage promiscuity, and then we talked about Peter Van Houten's amazingly brilliant comment about the sluttiness of time, and even though I was in bed and he was in his basement, it really felt like we were back in that uncreated third space, which was a place I really liked visiting with him.

Then I got off the phone and my mom and dad came into my room, and even though it was really not big enough for all three of us, they lay on either side of the bed with me and we all watched _ANTM_ on the little TV in my room. This girl I didn't like, Selena, got kicked off, which made me really happy for some reason. Then Mom hooked me up to the BiPAP and tucked me in, and Dad kissed me on the forehead, the kiss all stubble, and then I closed my eyes.

The BiPAP essentially took control of my breathing away from me, which was intensely annoying, but the great thing about it was that it made all this noise, rumbling with each inhalation and whirring as I exhaled. I kept thinking that it sounded like a dragon breathing in time with me, like I had this pet dragon who was cuddled up next to me and cared enough about me to time his breaths to mine. I was thinking about that as I sank into sleep.

I got up late the next morning. I watched TV in bed and checked my email and then after a while started crafting an email to Peter Van Houten about how I couldn't come to Amsterdam but I swore upon the life of my mother that I would never share any information about the characters with anyone, that I didn't even _want_ to share it, because I was a terribly selfish person, and could he please just tell me if the Dutch Tulip Man is for real and if Anna's mom marries him and also about Sisyphus the Hamster.

But I didn't send it. It was too pathetic even for me.

Around three, when I figured Jace would be home from school, I went into the backyard and called him. As the phone rang, I sat down on the grass, which was all overgrown and dandeliony. That swing set was still back there, weeds growing out of the little ditch I'd created from kicking myself higher as a little kid. I remembered Dad bringing home the kit from Toys "R" Us and building it in the backyard with a neighbor. He'd insisted on swinging on it first to test it, and the thing damn near broke.

The sky was gray and low and full of rain but not yet raining. I hung up when I got Jace's voice mail and then put the phone down in the dirt beside me and kept looking at the swing set, thinking that I would give up all the sick days I had left for a few healthy ones. I tried to tell myself that it could be worse, that the world was not a wish-granting factory, that I was living with cancer not dying of it, that I mustn't let it kill me before it kills me, and then I just started muttering _stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid_ over and over again until the sound unhinged from its meaning. I was still saying it when he called back.

"Hi," I said.

"Clare," he said.

"Hi," I said again.

"Are you crying, Clare?"

"Kind of?"

"Why?" he asked.

"'Cause I'm just—I want to go to Amsterdam, and I want him to tell me what happens after the book is over, and I just don't want my particular life, and also the sky is depressing me, and there is this old swing set out here that my dad made for me when I was a kid."

"I must see this old swing set of tears immediately," he said. "I'll be over in twenty minutes."

I stayed in the backyard because Mom was always really smothery and concerned when I was crying, because I did not cry often, and I knew she'd want to _talk_ and discuss whether I shouldn't consider adjusting my medication, and the thought of that whole conversation made me want to throw up.

It's not like I had some utterly poignant, well-lit memory of a healthy father pushing a healthy child and the child saying _higher higher higher_ or some other metaphorically resonant moment. The swing set was just sitting there, abandoned, the two little swings hanging still and sad from a grayed plank of wood, the outline of the seats like a kid's drawing of a smile.

Behind me, I heard the sliding-glass door open. I turned around. It was Jace, wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeve plaid button-down. I wiped my face with my sleeve and smiled. "Hi," I said.

It took him a second to sit down on the ground next to me, and he grimaced as he landed rather ungracefully on his ass. "Hi," he said finally. I looked over at him. He was looking past me, into the backyard.

"I see your point," he said as he put an arm around my shoulder. "That is one sad goddamned swing set."

I nudged my head into his shoulder. "Thanks for offering to come over."

"You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you," he said.

"I guess?" I said.

"All efforts to save me from you will fail," he said.

"Why? Why would you even like me? Haven't you put yourself through enough of this?" I asked, thinking of Aline Penhallow.

Jace didn't answer. He just held on to me, his fingers strong against my left arm. "We gotta do something about this frigging swing set," he said. "I'm telling you, it's ninety percent of the problem." Once I'd recovered, we went inside and sat down on the couch right next to each other, the laptop half on his (fake) knee and half on mine.

"Hot," I said of the laptop's base.

"Is it now?" He smiled. Jace loaded this giveaway site called Free No Catch and together we wrote an ad.

"Headline?" he asked.

"'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said.

"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.

"'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.

He laughed. "That's why."

"What?"

"That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates an adjectival version of the word _pedophile_? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are."

I took a deep breath through my nose. There was never enough air in the world, but the shortage was particularly acute in that moment.

We wrote the ad together, editing each other as we went. In the end, we settled upon this:

**Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home** One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home.

Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.

Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill.

After that, we turned on the TV for a little while, but we couldn't find anything to watch, so I grabbed _An Imperial Affliction_ off the bedside table and brought it back into the living room and Augustus Waters read to me while Mom, making lunch, listened in.

_"'Mother's glass eye turned inward,'"_ Jace began. As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.

When I checked my email an hour later, I learned that we had plenty of swing-set suitors to choose from. In the end, we picked a guy named Daniel Alvarez who'd included a picture of his three kids playing video games with the subject line _I just want them to go outside_. I emailed him back and told him to pick it up at his leisure.

Jace asked if I wanted to go with him to Support Group, but I was really tired from my busy day of Having Cancer, so I passed. We were sitting there on the couch together, and he pushed himself up to go but then fell back down onto the couch and sneaked a kiss onto my cheek.

"Jace!" I said.

"Friendly," he said. He pushed himself up again and really stood this time, then took two steps over to my mom and said, "Always a pleasure to see you," and my mom opened her arms to hug him, whereupon Jace leaned in and kissed my mom on the cheek. He turned back to me. "See?" he asked.

I went to bed right after dinner, the BiPAP drowning out the world beyond my room.

I never saw the swing set again.

* * *

**_Hey guys. Sorry this is so late. I hope you guys enjoyed. And Yes I realize that sentences are the same but some things are slightly changed. I'd just like you to know that I am doing this out of pure laziness. I just want you guys to know that JOHN GREEN is the one that owns all of these words and CASSANDRA CLARE owns the characters names. :D The last chapter for this challenge will be up soon. Oh and sorry for the constant switching of Dr. Herondale and Dr. Imogen. I'm über tired and I keep switching back and forth. _**

**_SO SORRY 4 mistakes. It's hard to go back through 23, 158 words three times. _**


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